A £110 million investment is being fast-tracked by the Government to accelerate the construction of hundreds of additional prison places, the Justice Secretary is set to announce.
Alex Norris will outline proposals aimed at speeding up building work across the prison estate as part of wider ministerial efforts to tackle severe capacity pressures.
The details are scheduled for presentation to MPs on Tuesday, alongside specifics regarding an early release scheme designed to mitigate overcrowding.
Alongside the capital, which has been reallocated from existing departmental budgets, officials are also converting vacant internal areas within jails into functioning cells.
Justice Secretary Mr Norris said: "This Government is serious about fixing the broken prison system we inherited, which is why we’ve already delivered more than 3,200 prison places in just two years.
"We’re now investing to boost these efforts further – getting spades in the ground quicker to deliver thousands more places to lock up dangerous criminals and keep the public safe."
Elsewhere, ministers have signed off on a contract that will pave the way for a new 1,700-capacity prison in Lancashire.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced that the killers of Thames Valley police officer Andrew Harper will be excluded from early release, following significant public backlash.
Mr Burnham initially resisted pressure to narrow the scheme further after it emerged that Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, convicted of Pc Harper’s manslaughter in 2020, would be eligible next year.
Certain offenders serving indefinite prison sentences, which were abolished in 2012, will also be freed through legislation to be introduced before the end of this Parliament, the Prime Minister promised.
Around 5,000 prisoners were due to be released early from October under measures to ease overcrowding, down from 6,000 after ministers stepped in to exempt rapists and "serious" child sex offenders.
Further capacity will be created through the deportation of foreign offenders and the release of inmates serving indefinite sentences under imprisonment for public protection sentences (IPPs).
However, changes regarding IPPs could take years to implement and will not form part of the initial wave of measures.
Thames Valley’s chief constable Jason Hogg cautioned on Monday that monitoring and tagging individuals granted early release will prove "difficult" for forces across the country.
He said: "The police haven’t received any additional funding for this additional work, so I’m going to be having to move resources away from one area of business to another to seek out, arrest, and bring before the court individuals who don’t follow the restrictions that they will be set.
"For example, their tagging restrictions. We don’t quite know what the demand will be on that, but I think it’ll be reasonably high, so it’s definitely more work for us."
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