Shabana Mahmood says prisons may still run out of space.

The justice secretary has said the government’s plans to open up 14,000 more prison places could run out of space in the next few years.

Shabana Mahmood told the BBC that “building is not enough” to tackle the severe shortage of space in UK prisons.

The government is publishing its 10-year strategy to tackle prison overcrowding – which includes more details on how it will create an extra 14,000 places in England and Wales by 2031.

It came as the prisons were just 100 places away from reaching full capacity over the summer.

The government initially released thousands of prisoners to make room – more than 1,700 in England and Wales in September and another 1,200 in October.

Under its new prison strategy – which it is calling the “Transformation Plan” – the government will build four new prisons over the next seven years, creating 6,400 new places.

New blocks will be built on the existing jail sites to create the same number of spaces.

As well, 1,000 temporary cells with a lifespan of 15 years will be built – and another 1,000 cells will be renewed.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today program broadcast on Wednesday, Mahmood said, “The current situation is terrible.

He said the prison system was under “huge pressure” and was seeing prisoners “coming out better criminals than before they went in”.

“We have to turn it around,” he said. “I think the first step to turning things around is to deal with our capacity issues.”

But Mehmood conceded that even with the extra space, another overcrowding crisis could occur, and that building more prisons is not the only solution.

“We’ll be finished,” he said. “Demand is still growing faster than any supply can possibly hold.”

“We are very honest and transparent in our strategy that building alone is not enough as demand is growing rapidly,” he added.

Prison populations have grown in recent decades as a result of harsher sentences and a backlog of courts.

And the prison population is growing by around 4,500 a year – faster than previous governments have built new cells.

But Carl Davies, from the Prison Governors’ Association, which represents managers in the prison service in England and Wales, was cynical about the plans.

“We’ve heard it over and over again — we’re going to build more prisons,” he said. “Announcements and strategies are great, but until we believe something, until we see it happen, it’s hard to believe the words.”

As part of the government’s strategy, it is also changing the planning rules governing the construction of prisons.

It states that prisons will be considered “places of national importance”, with the power to green light planning applications being placed in the hands of ministers only, and with decisions taking more than 16 weeks. It won’t take.

The government said £2.3bn had already been secured through the budget to pay for the construction of four new prisons by 2026.

A further £500 million will be spent on prison maintenance and the probation service over the next two years.

But Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service estimates it will cost £2.8bn over the next five years to bring the whole estate into a fairer state, more than double its current maintenance costs.

And The National Audit Office warned last week. That prison expansion costs were expected to be at least £4.2bn higher than original estimates in 2021.

Along with this prison strategy, the government has hope. Separate assessment of punishment A long-term solution may be to reduce the demand for prisons.

The review of prison sentences is being led by David Gawick, the former Conservative justice secretary.

The review will consider scrapping short sentences and toughening community orders as an alternative to prison. It will report again next spring.

Asked by the Today program if some people currently in prison could not be in the future, Mahmood said it was a possibility.

“Yes … we’re going to have to expand the range of sentencing available outside prison, which means we’re going to have more offenders supervised outside,” he said.

“But I want to make sure that when we’re not putting someone in jail but they’re being sentenced outside, it’s a sentence they can count on.”

The Conservative government promised to build 20,000 new prisons by 2026.

HMP Prison and Probation Service had created more than 6,518 by September.

The Labor government has promised to build the rest – about 14,000 – by 2031, a promise already made during the election campaign.

last week, The National Audit Office released an important report. Saying that Boris Johnson’s government’s pledge to build 20,000 extra cell spaces was now not expected to be met until 2031 – almost five years later than promised. It also said the scheme was running on a budget in excess of £4.2bn.