Prisons ‘sleepwalking into crisis’ as inmates forced to share single cells

Longer sentences and court backlogs push 25% of prisoners in England and Wales into shared cells, adding to drug-use and violence

The scale of the prison overcrowding crisis has been laid bare by figures revealing that a quarter of prisoners in England and Wales have been sharing cells designed for one person with at least one other inmate.

According to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), 11,018 cells intended for single use were being shared by two prisoners, with a further 18 such cells shared by three inmates. The overall prison population - which has ballooned over recent decades because of longer sentences and court backlogs - stood at about 88,000 when the statistics were originally compiled in late February.