A crisis in prisons gives Britain’s new government its first test

The last of these problems has caused the first big headache of the new Labour government’s term in office. Britain’s prisons are full: space for new inmates is on course to run out within months, possibly weeks. Ms Mahmood warned that a lack of custody space would mean “vanloads of dangerous people circling the country”; police would be taken off the streets to manage overflow cells. The government’s short-term fix is to extend early releases, so some prisoners will be let out with less of their sentence completed. Its long-term plans are fuzzier and more intriguing.