ESTONIA has offered to hold UK prisoners with our jails full to bursting.
The number of lags banged up in England and Wales this week hit a record high of 88,350.
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Judges have been warned not to jail low-level criminals and some prisoners are set for early release to ease overcrowding.
Yesterday, Estonia’s minister of justice Liisa Pakosta said the Baltic nation had cells it could rent out to Nato allies.
She said the scheme could be worth £25million to Estonia and hinted the UK and Sweden are already in talks over sending prisoners there.
She said: “Half of the spaces are empty. And it is true that I’ve submitted a memo to the government cabinet for discussion, to choose the direction of the solution with which to proceed.”
The total of 88,350 people in prison as of August 30 is up 116 from 88,234 a week ago and a jump of nearly 1,000 from 87,362 four weeks ago.
It is the highest since 2011 and comes after hundreds involved in recent far-right riots were jailed.
The prison population has been rising for much of the past three years, having dropped as low as 77,727 in April 2021 in Covid.
Nest mont, an estimated 5,500 offenders are set to be released early in a temporary scheme to ease the crisis.
They will be subject to strict licensing conditions and won’t include anyone convicted of sex crimes, and terror, domestic abuse and some violent offences.
In Berlin this week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vowed that more prisons will be built.
He said: “People do need to go to prison. We need to build those prisons and will get our hands on planning laws to do so.”