A RECORD number of prisoners were in jails in England and Wales yesterday after a surge in offenders being sent to prison by the courts.

The new record prison population occured when the overall number in the 139 jails reached 75,550, six higher than the record in April last year. Prison numbers have risen by almost 600 since the beginning of April despite hopes among senior Whitehall officials that numbers had stabilised and were gradually falling.

Juliet Lyon, the director of the Prison Reform Trust, said last night: “This miserable toll of people who will spill out of our overcrowded prisons mostly to offend again can only be reduced if (the) Government is prepared to seek solutions outside the criminal justice system in mental healthcare, housing, employment, family support and drug treatment.

“Currently we have the worst of all worlds with the Prison Service facing swingeing budget cuts while still being expected to cope with everyone failed by other public services.”

The rise in the number of prisoners is a blow to Martin Narey, the chief executive of the National Offender Management Service, who has been attempting to persuade judges and magistrates to make greater use of community penalties.

He has been confident that they were listening to his message and were sending fewer people to jail because community sentences were an effective alternative. Despite Mr Narey’s optimism, the public remain unconvinced that community sentences are effective. Polling carried out for the Home Office found a majority of people believe that community sentences are too soft and easy to get out of doing. A majority believed that community penalties should include physical work.

Prison Service officials believe that one reason for the increase could be linked to the election. They suspect that judges and magistrates fear being engulfed in politics if they hand out community punishments. Officials also believe that they are becoming more cautious over sentencing because they fear sustained media criticism.

The Government has set an 80,000 ceiling on the jail population but officials in the Prison Service are concerned that the effects of new sentences which have been applied since the beginning of this month will fuel further increases in prison numbers. No new prisons are planned or under construction, although the Prison Service is currently looking at potential sites. Paul Goggins, the Prisons Minister, said earlier this year: “We have no plans at the moment to commission the building of a new prison”.

Mr Goggins said at that time that he hoped that as numbers stabilised the Government would, in the long term, hope to close older jails and replace them with new prisons in more convenient locations.

The latest Home Office estimates on the prison population suggest that it will be much lower than previous predictions, but that it could still hit 109,000 by 2009. The new projections estimate that the number of prisoners in jails in England and Wales will be between 76,590 and 86,190 in 2009 and between 76,170 and 87,550 by 2011.

The long-term prison population estimates are based on assumptions about how the courts will operate a range of new sentences which come into effect this month.

The new sentences say that any offender convicted of a sexual or violent offence — for which the maximum sentence is 10 years or more — faces an indeterminate sentence aimed at protecting the public.

The ‘public protection sentence’ means that an offender in this category will only be released if the Parole Board is convinced that they do not represent a risk to the public.

At the moment a person in this category has to be released at the two-thirds stage of their sentence.

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