Prison overcrowding leading to early release of prisoners. Cause? Possibly austerity measures allowing capacity to fall below needs.

It's happened here too.

Asylum seekers. Austerity measures have seen the closure of all but 2 asylum centres. As there is no compulsion to house overflow, most councils are refusing to take any asylum seekers, even on a temporary basis. The result is that the main centre in ter Apel regularly exceeds its 2000 capacity and leads to the taxpayer funded centre getting fined €15K per day up to a (now reached) max of €1.5M. That goes to the local council. The current right wing Government has scrapped a bill from the previous centre right lot to enforce an even distribution over the country. That has helped councils not wanting refugees to stand a lot firmer against having any. Only last week, 150 were having to sleep outside the compound on the grass until a neighbouring council opened up a sports hall and put 150 beds in there.

Prisons. Austerity saw prisons close and staff sacked when there was an apparent excess of empty cells. The required prison capacity goes in waves, sometimes up, sometimes down. When it was down, closures happened. We are now in an upwards wave. We haven't copied the UK early release scheme, however. What we have done is keep the available cells for the more serious criminals. What happens to the others? No curfew, no ankle monitoring, no reporting to police stations. They are currently getting on with their lives. Will they serve the time they've been given? Yes, they will. It involves, mainly, people with sentences of 2 months or less and a few up to 3 months so no dangerous criminals. When a cell is likely to come free, they will get notice to report to the jail on a particular to serve their time. There are currently 3500 convicted people awaiting the call. The Government are currently in talks with Estonia, to have them serve their time there as Estonia currently has a much smaller than expected prison population. They, sensibly, are not going to shut prisons and sack staff. Over here they want to reopen some of the closed establishments and rehire the sacked staff, all of whom now have other jobs and don't want to return.

Might Estonia be a solution to the UK's current overcrowding issue?