Emergency measures activated to ease English prisons’ overcrowding

LONDON – The UK government activated emergency measures Monday to ease overcrowding in prisons in northern England, as growing numbers of people are convicted for involvement in the riots seen earlier this month.
The decision to invoke “Operation Early Dawn”, which allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to court until space in prison becomes available, follows hundreds of convictions for participating in the disorder.
That has exacerbated a capacity crisis within the prison system in England and Wales, with the new Labour government warning last month it was on the…