Prisons ‘sleepwalking into crisis’ as inmates forced to share single cells
Longer sentences and court backlogs push 25% of prisoners in England and Wales into shared cells, adding to drug-use and violenceThe scale of the prison overcrowding crisis has been laid bare by figures revealing that a quarter of prisoners in England and Wales have been sharing cells designed for one person with at least one other inmate.According to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), 11,018 cells intended for single use were being shared by two prisoners, with a further 18 such cells shared by thr