THE Government yesterday signalled an emergency programme to build more jail cells to deal with the surge in offenders being imprisoned.

Jack Straw, the Leader of the Commons, also admitted that community punishments were failing to stop criminals committing further offences.

Officials in the Home Office are considering a series of options to tackle the rising jail population, which led Anne Owers, Chief Inspector of Prisons, to say that jails were close to putting up “house full” notices.

Mr Straw admitted that more spaces would probably be needed after the jail population hit 77,785 last Friday — 38 short of the all-time high of 77,823, recorded last November. The number of prisoners is now only 1,693 beneath the figure at which prison bosses will declare that it is no longer safe to accept any more offenders.

Mr Straw, a former Home Secretary, told the BBC One Sunday AM programme that the Government had increased jail spaces since coming to power. He added: “The chances are that more have to be provided.”

A total of 19,000 prison spaces have been provided since Labour came to power but the Government has been reluctant to build new jails and set a ceiling on the prison population of 80,000.

Mr Straw said that the failure of non-custodial sentences was one of the reasons for the rise in prison numbers.

“I wish it were possible to deal with criminals outside prison but most people who end up in prison go there because community punishments have failed,” he said.

A further 1,000 spaces are planned in existing prisons over the next year, which will take the overall capacity of the 139 jails in England and Wales to 80,400 by July 2007.

The Home Office confirmed that it was looking at the possibility of building more prisons. A spokeswoman said: “This is something that is being considered as part of a wider Home Office review.” The difficulty is that new jails take between three and five years from planning to completion. As a result officials are looking at putting ready-to-use units in existing jails to deal with the current surge in numbers.

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