Prisons in England and Wales are 98.3% full, despite the population falling slightly since the government accepted recommendations of a recent sentencing review.
There are now 1,448 prison places available – up from 961 last month, when the estate was running at 98.9% capacity.
But HM Prison and Probation Service says it can’t run the estate efficiently at over 95% occupancy.
There have been calls to improve rehabilitation inside prisons, given 53% of those released commit crime again within a year, while 80% of offenders are reoffenders.
But the justice secretary said it’s much harder to rehabilitate offenders with the prison system "permanently on the point of collapse".
She was asked by Labour MP Clive Efford in the Commons last month how the government would reduce reoffending, which is "costing us £22 billion a year".
Mahmood responded: "One of the problems of running a prison system at absolutely boiling hot, where you’re permanently on the point of collapse… it means that within the prison estate you’re not able to make much progress on the sorts of programmes that offenders would need to access to begin a rehabilitation journey."
• Subscribe to ITV News on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2lOHmNj
• Get breaking news and more stories at http://www.itv.com/news
Follow ITV News on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@itvnews?lang=en
Follow ITV News on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itvnews/
Follow ITV News on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itvnews/
Follow ITV News on X: https://twitter.com/itvnews
