Men's jails to hold women

A huge surge in the number of female inmates is forcing the Prison Service to convert men's jails to hold women.

The total has jumped by 25 per cent since the start of this year and now stands above 4,000 for the first time, the Home Office has admitted.

There are 4,033 women serving sentences or on remand, compared with 3,119 at the start of January. The Prison Service says the maximum number that can be held without overcrowding is 4,026.

Much of the increase is due to the drugs trade, with women used as "mules" to carry cocaine or other substances through Customs. Many are foreign nationals.

A former men's prison, Downview in Banstead, will be used to hold female remand prisoners, although local Tory MP Crispin Blunt claims essential conversion work has not been completed early enough. Female warders are being brought to the site from all over the country to cope with the new demands on a temporary basis.

This year's rise marks an acceleration in the long-term trend towards higher number of women being sentenced to prison by magistrates and judges. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, predicted in February that the number of women prisoners would reach 5,000 by 2007. On present trends it will reach that level in 2003. The rise has infuriated groups such as the Howard League for Penal Reform, which calls for the abolition of women's prisons. An estimated half of all women inmates have children under 16. Around a quarter are from ethnic minorities.

The number of male prisoners is also on the rise, although not as dramatically. The total number of men and women in prison now stands at 68,066, up by 2,000 since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, it was revealed today that half of all teenage criminals behind bars in England and Wales have the maths or reading abilities of a seven-year-old. More than two thirds have a reading age of less than 11, the Government's Youth Justice Board has found.

As Britain faces a national youth crime epidemic costing more than £1billion a year, the education audit reveals the critical link between offending and failure at school. Lord Warner, chairman of the Youth Justice Board, is telling a conference in London today that the Prison Service faces an "extreme challenge" trying to provide education for young offenders with "severe educational deficits".

Typically, there are 11,000 young offenders locked up at any one time, 1,000 of them aged under 16. Most have not been in regular education or training before being convicted.

London figures show 70 per cent of crime is committed by under-17s and police and youth workers estimate that a hard core of 12 offenders in every borough are responsible for 25 per cent of all crime.

A government study also reveals that schoolchildren in London are Britain's most active young criminals but the least likely to be caught. One in three 11- to 16-year-olds in the capital admit committing an offence in the last 12 months but only one in 10 has ever been caught.

Links between crime and truancy are also very pronounced. Police patrols have started carrying out regular truancy sweeps in many London boroughs. When truants were targeted recently in Newham, car crime fell by 70 per cent, street crime was cut by 17 per cent and burglaries 39 per cent.

Lord Warner said every Youth Offending Teams in the country has a target of getting 90 per cent of young offenders aged 13 to 18 into education, training or work by 2004. The drive is seen as critical in breaking the cycle of re-offending, with 80 per cent of those leaving custody reconvicted inside two years.