The home secretary, John Reid, is to unveil emergency measures to hold inmates, including the use of police cells, as the prison system nears the limits of its capacity.

A statement may come as early as today. Figures released at the weekend showed there were 79,843 prisoners in England and Wales, 125 short of the official limit, with the number rising at about 50 a day. "The figures are going up through the roof," Gerry Sutcliffe, the justice minister, admitted last night.

Mr Reid has accepted the need to return to 2002's Operation Safeguard, when prisoners were kept in police station cells over a six-month period. He has ruled out freeing some prisoners early under an executive release scheme, despite a recommendation to that effect from officials.
But ministers acknowledged yesterday that they were looking at moving more inmates to open prisons. A memo leaked to the Sunday Times suggests that Mr Reid accepts this would mean more escapes in the short term. Fiona Radford, governor of Ford open prison in West Sussex, told her staff that Phil Wheatley, the head of the Prison Service, had reported that an increase in the "number of absconds [was] accepted as inevitable by JR", with JR meaning John Reid.

Officials acknowledge that moving prisoners to open facilities increases the chances of escape. About two a week have walked out in the last five years. But in a series of interviews yesterday Mr Sutcliffe denied the rate would go up. "Everybody who has to be moved has to be risk-assessed, and those people have got to be looked at in terms of danger to the community. We're saying no sex offenders and no violent offenders have got to be recategorised," he said on BBC Radio Five Live.

Mr Sutcliffe acknowledged that other prisoners, possibly including burglars or muggers, could be reclassified from category C to D. "We've got to ask ourselves why in the UK we have a higher prison population per head of population than anywhere else in Europe," he told Sky News. The public wanted tougher sentences for violent and sexual offenders, he said. But Mr Sutcliffe welcomed the intervention of the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, who yesterday called for the greater use of community punishments.

"It's madness spending £37,000 a year [jailing someone] when by spending much less on services in the community you can do as good a job," Lord Phillips told the Observer after spending a day on a community "payback" project by posing as a convicted drink-driver.

One source close to ministers' thinking said the 2003 Criminal Justice Act was meant to deliver heavier sentences for violent and sexual offences and at the same time encourage courts to use non-custodial sentences for less serious crime. But magistrates and judges had been reluctant to pursue the latter, the source said.

Lord Phillips said in yesterday's interview that "courts will not use non-custodial sentences unless they are persuaded the services are there, and properly resourced".

Other options being considered by Mr Reid include the transfer of some foreign prisoners to immigration centres, though officials acknowledge the centres are themselves struggling to cope. The home secretary is also negotiating with EU ministers for a prisoner exchange, though even if this were carried out in full it would make a dent of only around 200 in the prison population.

In the medium term, the government believes it can deliver an extra 1,000 prison places by the new year, with ministers committed to another 7,000 after that. Plans include the conversion of Connaught barracks near Dover, which Mr Sutcliffe visited on Thursday.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "Our prisons are so overcrowded that not only are offenders being released early but those offenders who are in prison are not receiving proper rehabilitation. They are simply shunted around before they have any chance of completing drug rehabilitation or training courses ... It beggars belief that John Reid is prepared to compound this risk by accepting more prisoners absconding from prison."

And where are coppers going to put their prisioners???

Do what we did before, double up.

Did I hear the overtime bell ring???????