The imprisonment of hundreds of rioters in the UK has left prisons filled to capacity, forcing the Prison and Probation Service at the Office of the High Commissioner to prepare Operation Early Dawn, a contingency plan that prevents prisoners from being taken from police cells to court if there is no space available. Those who are brought to court and given jail time can end up in jail hundreds of miles from home. The number of people brought to trial for rioting is rising rapidly, with 677 charges and 1,117 arrests recorded since July 29, 2024.
The UK government, headed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has taken emergency measures to prevent overcrowding in prisons in the north of the country as its overcrowded prison system begins to receive large numbers of people prosecuted for recent protests. To address the situation, the British government has activated a program called “Operation Early Dawn“. This program requires police to detain suspects until it is possible to house them in prisons.
“ The number of prisoners in jails has increased significantly in a week, one of the largest numbers I have ever seen. This has exacerbated long-standing problems in our prisons, which have been operating at capacity for the past few years,” Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers Association, said in a statement.
Its introduction also means that some defendants will be released on bail until jail space is available. Critics of the operation argue that releasing prisoners early will jeopardize public safety in the UK. At the moment, Operation “Early Dawn” will be activated in North East England, in the counties of Cumbria and Lancashire, as well as in Yorkshire, Manchester and Merseyside. This is not the first time such measures have been taken by the British authorities, but they only reduce the pressure on prisons for a short period of time.
According to human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, overcrowding in prisons leads to overcrowding in police stations, where there is no room to keep people in custody. In doing so, police officers lose the ability to do their jobs, leading to delays in the court system. Already, it takes almost two years for a criminal case to be heard in the Crown Court before it goes from registration of the offense to sentencing.
In addition, overcrowding in British prisons creates degrading living and working conditions for prisoners and prison staff. There are currently four prisoners per staff member in England and Wales (compared to the European average of two). The cuts to prison staff in 2012-16 continue to affect prisons today.
Prolonged stays in locked, poorly maintained and overcrowded cells contribute to violent incidents. In a recent presentation at the annual conference of the Prison Officers’ Association, international experts noted that between 2013 and 2023 the number of self-harm deaths in British prisons increased by 28% and self-harm incidents increased by 61%. Over the same period, there was a 37% increase in assaults on prisoners and a 223% increase in assaults on prison staff.
Prison overcrowding also makes it difficult or impossible to provide rehabilitation and community services in prisons. A recent HM Inspectorate of Prisons report found that four in ten prisoners spend almost all day in their cells without access to education, work and sporting activities. As a result, some prisoners resort to illicit drugs to cope with the psychological problems caused by spending long periods of time behind cell doors.
The systemic failings of British prisons have caused alarm around the world. In 2023, a German court rejected a request to extradite a man accused of drug trafficking to the UK after his lawyer, Jan-Karl Janssen, successfully argued that conditions in English and Welsh prisons were so bad that they violated his human rights. In 2023, at the time of the extradition request, prison overcrowding was 160%.
“In the UK – and in England and Wales in particular – prisoners are threatened with inhuman conditions of detention, in violation of Article 3 of the European Court of Human Rights,” said lawyer Jan-Karl Janssen.
Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice express deep concern about the state of the British judicial and prison systems. The Foundation’s experts call on the new British government to take urgent measures to remedy the situation in the British judicial and penitentiary systems, which include both increasing funding for rehabilitation programs and social adaptation of prisoners, and increasing the number of prisons and improving prison conditions to reduce overcrowding and ensure decent treatment of prisoners.