New rules set out for foreign criminals and low-level offenders

Allowing low-level offenders to avoid jail and deporting foreign criminals earlier are among government plans aimed at tackling severe overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales.

Figures from earlier this year revealed that 61% of prisons were overcrowded.

The justice secretary is due to set out details of his plan for easing pressure in Parliament on Monday afternoon.

Alex Chalk has already said he wants some offenders to do community work rather than short stints in prison.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend, he said: "A short stretch of a few months inside isn't enough time to rehabilitate criminals, but is more than enough to dislocate them from the family, work and home connections that keep them from crime.

"This is the wrong use of our prison system and taxpayers' money. It doesn't deliver for victims and it doesn't cut crime."

Instead, he said he wanted judges to make criminals "repay their debt to society" by activities including cleaning neighbourhoods and scrubbing graffiti off walls.

In addition to reducing prison time for some offenders, Mr Chalk said he wanted serious offenders to be kept in jail for longer, with rapists being made to spend the entirety of their sentence in prison.

The government has also announced its intention to free up prison spaces by deporting foreign criminals earlier.

There are 10,500 foreign offenders in prisons in England and Wales. Under current rules, they can be sent home up to a year before the end of their sentence.

New plans would see more caseworkers deployed to speed up removals, allowing criminals to be removed up to six-months earlier.

"It's right that foreign criminals are punished but it cannot be right that some are sat in prison costing taxpayers £47,000 a year when they could be deported," Mr Chalk said.

The government also says it would introduce a law to allow prisoners to be held overseas, a move that the government said follows steps taken by Belgium and Norway.

Labour said the plans were "half-baked" and "a huge admission of failure".

Shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said Labour would recruit "1,000 more staff to a new returns unit in the Home Office, funded by ending the use of costly hotels to house asylum seekers, currently costing the taxpayer £8m a day".

Ministers have been under pressure to relieve a nearly full prison system.

The system's total capacity is 88,782, while the current prison population is 88,225 - that means prisons are about 500 places away from reaching full capacity.

The prison population has increased by 7,000 over the past year - an increase of 8%. It is projected to rise to 94,400 by March 2025.

The state of prisons in England and Wales was thrown into the spotlight last month when a man was charged with escaping from Wandsworth Prison.

A report by the Independent Monitoring Board said the prison was "unsafe and inhumane".

The watchdog also raised concern about overcrowding, noting that in two wings there were 11 shower stalls for 265 men.