Town prison is most overcrowded

Shrewsbury's Dana prison was today named as the most overcrowded jail in the country for the second year running. The prison is running at almost double its 177-capacity.

The Prison Reform Trust said overcrowding and high reoffending levels were in danger of being regarded by ministers as a "fact of life" and "too difficult to fix".

According to official figures, the Dana is running at 179 per cent of normal capacity, topping the table of most overcrowded prisons, followed by Swansea and Dorchester.

Overall there are 8,865 more prisoners inside the prisons system than it was designed to hold.

A total of 88 out of 140 jails were over their certified normal accommodation level – defined as providing "decent" standards.

The PRT today warned "sentence inflation" meant too many people were being locked up.

Director Juliet Lyon said: "Simply building more prisons is an expensive dead end. The only way to reserve prison for serious and violent offenders is to cut out all unnecessary use of breach and remand and tackle sentence inflation and the growth of indeterminate punishments."

Last month nine prisons were reached their absolute capacity. At the start of this month the prison population hit a record high, passing the 84,000 mark.

Liberal Democrat Justice spokesman Paul Holmes said: "These deeply troubling figures highlight the chronic failure of this Government's prison policy."

But ministers have pledged to increase prison capacity to 96,000 by 2014.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We will always provide enough prison places for serious and persistent offenders."