Northern Ireland’s prisons are bursting at the seams, putting officers under pressure. Crime Correspondent Deborah McAleese reports.

Prison guards are struggling to cope with swelling prisoner numbers as Ulster’s jail population reaches an all time high, a union official warned yesterday.

A total of 1,535 sentenced and remand prisoners are currently behind bars in the province’s three prisons — the highest number to date.

The whole prison estate has exceeded its single cell capacity, and with the upcoming introduction of tough new public protection arrangements, the prisoner population is expected to continue to bulge.

“It is a pressurised job anyway, but this prisoner overcrowding does not make life any easier,” said Finlay Spratt of the Prison Officers’ Association.

He continued: “When the numbers increase it causes difficulties on the landings when we have to double up prisoners.

“The trend would be that the numbers are going up and are going to keep going up.

“The quicker we get extra space the better as prison staff are under major pressure.

“The high level of sick leave adds to the pressure put on staff left to carry the burden.”

The prison population has been rising rapidly over the past few years.

Prison Service statistics reveal that this month there are 1,535 sentenced and remand prisoners. During the same period in 2001 there were 900.

Earlier this week the head of |the Northern Ireland Prison Service Robin Masefield said the |Service is “better equipped than ever to deal with the ongoing challenges”.

He acknowledged that the implementation of the Criminal Justice Order will place additional pressures on staff, but added that with “the continued commitment and support of all I am confident that we will continue to deliver a service which represents best value and of which the public can be justly proud”.

Four hundred new prison places and a new prison have been promised by the Government in a bid to stave off the overcrowding crisis plaguing prisons across the UK and the Republic.

In England, the government released 28,000 criminals early in under a year in a bid to reduce serious overcrowding.

Earlier this week, prison officers in the Republic blamed chronic overcrowding for a weekend riot by over 70 inmates at Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail.

There are currently 609 inmates in the facility, which was only designed to hold 420 prisoners.

Around 35 inmates barricaded themselves into the recreation area in the prison's D-wing and forced staff to withdraw.

Deputy General Secretary of the Irish Prison Officers Association Eugene Dennehy said the |incident was not the first of its kind and the issue of overcrowding needs to be tackled immediately.

And in Scotland John Scott, chairman of the Edinburgh Bar Association, last month called for judges and sheriffs to be limited in the sentences they can impose in an attempt to tackle overcrowding in prisons and reoffending.

Mr Scott said judges and sheriffs should be banned from passing jail sentences of less than 12 months.

Policing and Justice Minister Paul Goggins hopes the 400 extra prison spaces for Northern Ireland will help to meet the population pressures here over the next four or five years.

In the long term, the minister has hopes that the planned new 800-place prison on the site of the existing Magilligan Prison will avert any real overcrowding problems.