Overcrowded prisons are a savage reminder that we’re living in ‘Portakabin Britain’

Britain’s prisons are full. So full – indeed notoriously overcrowded – are they that the country has finally reached the point where those convicted of some of the most serious offences cannot be locked up and the public kept safe from them.

Rapists and burglars out on bail and awaiting sentencing hearings are to be allowed to roam free for a little longer, because all the authorities can do is postpone their court appointments until such time as sufficient cells can be found to accommodate them.

Other convicted criminals will have to languish in police station custody, which itself creates a problem of what to do with the freshly arrested held in custody. It invites the possibility of emergency portable buildings being installed within prison grounds.

Meantime, justice ministers are understood to have proposed some prisoners be released early, the usual short-term solution. Andrea Albutt, president of the Prison Governors Association, said it was “common sense” that the government would have to consider an early release scheme for thousands of prisoners before they’ve paid their full debt to society. So much for “tough on crime”.

It is, to say the least, an unsatisfactory solution to the problem.

It is not as if no one could see this particular crisis coming. After all, Britain’s prisons have been unhealthily overfull for decades, with the Victorian establishments especially badly suited to jamming in too many prisoners to a cell. The deleterious effects on the health, mental stability and safety of the inmates are obvious; but the stress of having to keep a lid on such places has driven sickness among prison staff ever higher.

We have seen countless examples of loss of control and mishaps. Our prisons are full of drugs and vermin, and short of rehabilitation and hygiene.

The inescapable conclusion is that prisons have been neglected for far too long. The far wider problem is that, sadly, much of the British public, and the press, cares little for the welfare of those behind bars. Allied to this is a constant demand for more criminals to be jailed, and an equally consistent reluctance to pay the taxes for the new jails and the staff required to run them. The results, entirely predictable, are upon us now.

The prison crisis also carries echoes of other public services being overwhelmed. Our schools, even before the Raac crumbling concrete scandal, relied too much on “temporary” accommodation that grew permanent. All too obviously, there is inadequate provision for the tens of thousands of refugees awaiting processing – so they are lodged on huge accommodation barges, like vast floating Portakabins.

If a Briton is admitted to A&E with a non-urgent condition, they are destined for a long wait on a plastic chair and a spell on a trolley in a corridor. Catch a West Coast Main Line train to or from Manchester and London at the wrong time of day and you will find yourself standing all the way (at least when you get stuck in traffic you can sit down).

This is what we may call “Portakabin Britain”, one where investment has been so measly that basic infrastructure is constantly close to collapse. It is true across many areas of everyday life but is an especially pernicious blight in the public realm. There is a sense that “nothing works”, and things have been allowed to get run down.

It is no great surprise that there’s an increasing willingness to blame the party that has been in power for the past 13 years for the state of the country. If “the party of law and order” can’t find a cell in which to house a convicted rapist, then it is time for it to take a long look at itself – and its record.