Law Weblog

Prison population – record high

Monday 22 August 2011 at 7:50 am | In News | Post Comment
Figures released Friday showed that the English prison population had hit a record high following the jailing of hundreds of people involved in the country’s recent riots.

Statistics released by the Ministry of Justice showed that the population in England and Wales reached 86,654 — just 1,500 places below operational capacity. About 700 people were added to the prison system in the past week.

A Manchester woman jailed for five months for accepting a pair of shorts that had been looted during the riots has been released in one of the first appeals against tough sentences being handed out by the courts, which have pushed the prison population to a record high.

Ursula Nevin, 24, has been ordered to do 75 hours of unpaid community work after a judge reduced the jail sentence imposed last week, saying it was

“wrong in principle”.