Defendants to be held in police cells as disorder increases pressure on prison places

The North East is one of the areas included in Operation Early Dawn, a long-standing plan which allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to magistrates’ court until a space in prison is available, was activated on Monday morning, the Ministry of Justice said.

The measure will be also put in place in Yorkshire, Cumbria, Lancashire, Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire.

Downing Street said the plans could be triggered and deactivated several times over the next few weeks as needed.

A spokeswoman said she expected the regions affected will “move in and out” of the contingency plan amid “short periods of significant pressure”.

Prisons and probation minister Lord Timpson said: “We inherited a justice system in crisis and exposed to shocks. As a result, we have been forced into making difficult but necessary decisions to keep it operating.

“However, thanks to the hard work of our dedicated staff and partners, we have brought forward additional prison places and now introduced Operation Early Dawn to manage the pressure felt in some parts of the country.”

Asked if the emergency measures posed a risk to public safety during a visit to Belfast, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the Government was making “really tough decisions, and nobody wants to take them”, as he repeated criticisms that Labour had inherited problems with prisons due to a “basic failure” by the previous Conservative administration to have enough prison places available.

“We’ve had to deal with that with the additional strain of the disorder of recent weeks”, he said, adding: “But we’ve been able to prove that if you commit disorder, you can expect to be put through the criminal justice system quickly, and we will continue in that vein.

“But I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a challenge. We will take the necessary tough decisions on this, but we should never, ever have been put in the position that we’re in today.”

National Police Chiefs’ Council custody lead Deputy Chief Constable Nev Kemp said: “We are working closely with criminal justice system partners to manage demand in the system and ensure that the public are safe.

“Policing will continue to arrest anyone that they need to in order to keep the public safe, including policing protests and events and ensuring that people are arrested as expected.”

Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, told BBC Breakfast the policy would lead to “justice delayed”.

He said the most serious offenders would still end up in court and be guaranteed a prison cell, but less serious offenders would either spend longer in police cells or be bailed.

“It’s justice delayed at the moment, because we’re not clogging up police cells, so they might have to delay some of their operations,” he said.

“When they arrest people, they’ve got to make sure they’ve got them a custody space in police custody, because we might have prisoners filling up their cells. Of course, they have got to pay overtime to supervise prisoners.”

But Mr Fairhurst clarified that this would not mean that some people who would normally go to jail would avoid it.

Tom Franklin, chief executive of the Magistrates’ Association, said the measures would lead to delays in defendants appearing in court.

“What this means is there will be a delay in some people who have been charged coming to court because the Prison Service can’t guarantee if they were remanded in custody, there would be a place for them,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We understand it is not in all regions, it is some regions, and we understand that it will be reviewed during the working day. We are assured that it is a temporary measure.”

Nick Emmerson, president of the Law Society of England and Wales, which represents solicitors, said the emergency measures being used in prisons “illustrates the consequences of the long-term neglect of the criminal justice system” and that reactivating Operation Early Dawn would affect victims, defendants and lawyers.

“In the longer term, sustained investment is needed across the criminal justice system in order to avoid it collapsing completely,” he added.

After the riots that broke out across parts of England after the stabbing of three girls in Southport, 460 people had appeared in magistrates’ courts in relation to the disorder by the end of Thursday.

Barrister Claire Anderson, defending Dean Groenewald, 32, who was jailed for 26 months for throwing a brick at police in Sunderland, told Newcastle Crown Court on Monday that conditions in custody were “exceptionally difficult at the moment”.

Operation Early Dawn was previously triggered by the Conservative government in May in a bid to tackle overcrowding in jails.

Last month, the Ministry of Justice said violence and self-harm in prison had risen to “unacceptable” levels as overcrowding pushed jails to the “point of collapse”.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans to cut the proportion of the sentence inmates must serve behind bars from 50% to 40%.

The temporary move – which does not apply to those convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse or some violent offences – is expected to result in 5,500 offenders being released in September and October.