Labour has accused Rishi Sunak of letting rapists and burglars walk free in a new hard-hitting attack ad on the prime minister.
A graphic produced by the party features Mr Sunak’s face and warns: “Under the Tories, rapists and burglars will be spared jail”.
It comes amid reports that Crown court judges have been told to delay sentencing hearings for serious crimes in an attempt to manage the surging prison population.
The opposition party posted the advert on social media with the warning: “Rishi Sunak has lost control of the prison system. He is letting violent criminals walk free. He is letting Britain down.”
Labour was criticised in April after the party launched a controversial advert claiming that the prime minister did not want child sexual abusers jailed.
But Keir Starmer stood by the graphic and Labour’s media operation has repeatedly re-sued the template on other issues, most recently in September in response to the scandal over unsafe schools built from Raac concrete.
The latest row over prisons comes after The Times reported that Lord Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales, has ordered courts to delay sentencing from Monday.
Figures uncovered by The Independent last week show overcrowding in prisons is nearing breaking point.
Most jails are dangerously full, with some holding 70 per cent more inmates than they should, including Wandsworth, from which terror suspect Daniel Khalife is accused of escaping.
And justice ministers are understood to have proposed some prisoners be released early.
The chief of prison governors, former home secretary Jack Straw and former Tory prisons minister Rory Stewart all warned last week that early release may have to be considered to tackle the crisis.
Nearly two-thirds of jails in England are officially overcrowded, with the number of free spaces in the prison estate falling from just 768 last week to 651 this week, over which period the male prison population has increased by 211 to 84,412.
A prison union threatened to take legal action if the Ministry of Justice asked governors to find extra capacity in already packed prisons.
Andrea Albutt, president of the Prison Governor’s Association (PGA), said: “If the government further overcrowd our prisons, if they say to our members ‘you will put more people in your already overcrowded prison’, we will take legal action.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We are categorical that the most serious offenders should be sent to prison and that anyone deemed a risk to public safety is remanded in custody while awaiting trial. Reports to the contrary are false.
“This Government has done more than ever before to protect the public and keep sex offenders locked up for longer, ending automatic halfway release for rapists and serious violent offenders and sending rapists to prison for three years longer than in 2010.
“Following the pandemic and barristers’ strike, the criminal justice system has seen a significant spike in the prison population, with 6,000 more prisoners on remand than before the pandemic. While we are carrying out the biggest prison-building programme since the Victoria era, and have taken decisive action to expand capacity further by doubling up cells in the short-term, the prison estate remains under pressure.
“The Lord Chancellor will be meeting criminal justice partners later today and setting out a programme of reform in the coming days to ensure that we can continue to strengthen public protection by locking up the most dangerous criminals.”
