Top Sheffield Crown Court judge highlights serious problems as prisons battle overcrowding 'crisis'

The Recorder of Sheffield, Judge Jeremy Richardson KC, pointed out that the Minister of State for Prisons recently announced Operation Safeguard to cope with overcrowding pressure in adult prisons and the Ministry of Justice called for efforts to make more cells available to reduce risks to inmates while the Deputy Prime Minister raised concerns about operating prisons at full capacity.

Judge Richardson told a hearing, on March 7, how Sheffield Crown Court and courts nationwide have experienced serious difficulties due to overcrowding faced by prisons in terms of ensuring remanded prisoners attend court sentencings on time and in terms of judges having to consider restricted, overcrowded jails when sentencing.

The latest problems follow huge difficulties faced by the prisons during the Covid-19 pandemic when prisoners had been forced to remain in their cells for as long as 23 hours a day and judges had to bear this difficulty in mind when sentencing during the global health crisis.

Judge Richardson said: “People are being shifted around all over the place because prisons are so full in a way they have never been before.”

He added: “They are being locked up and shunted around all over the place as we have experienced in an earlier case this morning.”

Judge Richardson was forced to adjourn a relevant sentencing of two defendants on March 7 until March 28 due to difficulties faced by prisons meant it had not been possible for one of the defendants to be brought to court on time.

He said: “It’s the third time the case has been listed and the prison again failed to to produce the other defendant, I am told.”

The court heard the relevant defendant had to be taken to York and was then moved to Manchester and on the morning of sentencing the bus to the court had not left for Sheffield and was not due to arrive at Sheffield Crown Court until 1pm so the case had to be adjourned.

Judge Richardson, who cited this case as an example of the current ‘crisis’, said: “It is unfair on absolutely everybody in the case. It’s unfair on the defendant. It’s unfair on the co-accused. It’s unfair on the counsel and solicitors and it’s unfair on the court and it’s unfair on the public.”

He later told another hearing: “The prisons in this country are in an exceptionally difficult situation. I deliberately read out this morning during the course of submissions extracts from a very recent Court of Appeal decision revealing that ministers have alerted Parliament to the problems.

“Additionally, ministers have written to the Lord Chief Justice about the acute problems. This court in common with every court in the country is experiencing very serious problems as a result of this current difficulty.”

In the meantime, Judge Richardson said that judges are being asked to consider these difficulties when considering sentences but he stressed it does not mean that he is absolutely obliged to impose suspended prison sentences.

He added: “In simple terms the Court of Appeal are making it clear that judgments consider the current crisis when evaluating and correctly calibrating the sentence in question.”