Prisons 'full of the wrong people'

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Prisons are full because they are being used to detain entire groups of people who should not be there, a former lord chief justice said.

Lord Woolf insisted asylum seekers and the mentally ill should not be kept in jails and suggested there were better ways of dealing with white collar criminals.

He also accused ministers of shying away from more "constructive" methods of punishment for fear of looking soft on crime.

The peer, who stood down as lord chief justice in 2005, said: "Where we see it goes wrong is legislation is made which has good, constructive principles behind it - it may have greater emphasis on community punishments, it may be setting up a sensible way to deal with sentencing.

"And then for political reasons ministers feel they have got to abandon that initiative to be seen as tough."

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said there was "just not room" for the number of offenders the courts were sending to prison.

Prisons should be kept for "dangerous people", he said.

He went on: "Certainly there are groups of people who shouldn't be there and shouldn't be there so long.

"People seeking asylum I don't believe should be there. Prisons aren't really made for that purpose," he said.

Lord Woolf said the failure to rehabilitate offenders meant many returned to prison, taking up additional places.