Prison Crowding - UK

The United Kingdom is reaching a critical stage in its prison service as jails have reached a status of overcrowding. The secretary of state for justice, Jack Straw, has recently urged Judges to start handing out fewer short sentences in preference to community service orders (Where the offender has to complete a specific amount of time working for the community).

Currently the population in the United Kingdom prison service is only 470 below its total capacity, which is a terrible situation as this means the prison service is roughly 99.5% full.

The government have seen this situation and have pledged to make another 2,500 spaces available in the prison service this year, but this situation has been coming along for a long time and was reported on a few years ago. I remember back in 2005 the government were looking at prison boats to easing the crowding in Her Majesty's Prisons.

I do wonder what the governemt has in store to reduce the crowding, will it give early release to offenders who have shown good behaviour or will the government look further in to the issue and try to find an alternative.

I have been thinking about a possible alternative and have a solution that the government could utilise effectively. The UK has many disused platforms in the north sea that gas companies once used to drill in to the earth so they could drill for gas. Could the government convert one of these huge platforms in to a high security prison, one where there is no escape besides via a helicopter arriving?

I think it would be great to use these disused eyesores on our landscape for something important, especially given that without using land on the greenbelt there is not much land left to start building new prisons.