BRITAIN:A row over prison overcrowding threatened to engulf British home secretary John Reid last night after two more judges called into question his advice on sentencing, and the chairman of the youth justice board resigned in protest at the rising number of children in custody.
Rod Morgan, who quit the youth justice board, said the country was "on the brink of a prisons crisis", three days after Mr Reid told courts to issue custodial sentences more sparingly as jails reached capacity.
Yesterday the official prison population was 79,731, some 356 higher than the same time last week and close to the maximum 80,114 capacity.
Prof Morgan focused on the rise in the number of under 18s in custody, which last month was 2,841, up 224 on December 2005.
"We have tonight lots of people in police cells because there is no space for them in custody and that's true for children and young people also," Prof Morgan said in a pre-recorded interview for BBC2's Newsnight.
"The youth justice board has a target to reduce the number of children and young people in custody by approximately 10 per cent by 2008. That target is written into our business plan, it has been agreed with the home office, it was incorporated in the home office five-year plan which was published early last year, and yet we're going backwards." Prof Morgan also described a 26 per cent rise in the number of children brought into the criminal justice system between 2002-03 and 2005-06 as "swamping".
Ministers had decided to advertise Prof Morgan's job after his three-year term rather than extend his contract. The board's future is also threatened with reorganisation, but the new chairman will be offered a three-year term.
Mr Reid, Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, and the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, made an appeal to the courts on Tuesday that prison should be used only for serious, persistent and violent offenders. The move was endorsed by the lord chief justice on Wednesday.
But on Thursday a judge in Mold, north Wales, said a man convicted for downloading child pornography would receive a suspended sentence rather than jail because of the ministers' communication. At Exeter crown court yesterday, Judge Graham Cottle released Keith Morris, a 46-year-old man convicted of four sex offences against a teenager, on bail ahead of sentencing. Morris has previous convictions for sex offences against boys.
The judge told the court: "There are difficulties remanding people in custody at the moment and the only reason I am having any discussion about this is because of those difficulties."
Later, at Northampton crown court, Judge Richard Bray sentenced three men for their part in a pub brawl and criticised sentencing policy. "I am well aware that there is overcrowding in the prison and detention centres. The reason our prisons are full to overcrowding, and have been for years, is because judges can no longer pass deterrent sentences."
Mr Reid said last night his appeal to judges had been a reminder, not a change, of the guidelines. - (Guardian service)