A generation of superprisons each holding more than 1,000 inmates has developed to house the rising number of offenders being given custodial sentences, according to government figures.

Twenty jails in England and Wales now hold more than 1,000 inmates as the Government embarks on the biggest prison-building programme in Western Europe.

Jails in Oxfordshire, Norfolk and Worcestershire hold almost the same number of inmates as inner-city jails such as Strangeways in Manchester.

Whereas housebuilding has been hit hard by the economic downturn, prison building remains recession-proof. The Ministry of Justice is planning to spend £2.3 billion to create 20,000 new places either in existing jails or by building new ones by 2014.

This month Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, will publish the results of a consultation on proposals to build up to three Titan jails, each holding 2,500 inmates — bigger than previously contemplated in Britain.

Prison governors and penal reform groups say that they would be difficult to control and would result in inmates being “warehoused”. But the Prison Service says that they would be segmented into five units, each holding 500 inmates.

Michael Spurr, the chief operating officer of the National Offender Management Service, a former prison governor, said: “Large prisons can operate just as well as smaller ones.”

While the proposed Titan prisons have generated controversy, the emergence of 20 prisons holding more than 1,000 inmates has gone largely unnoticed by the public and politicians.

Dame Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, told The Times: “When I first started this job we thought prisons holding between five and eight hundred were reasonably large but that has changed and we are looking at jails holding many more people.”

Prison Service managers have been forced to increase the size of jails in largely rural areas such as Wayland, Norfolk, and Bullingdon, Oxfordshire, to deal with the growing number of prisoners. Houseblocks able to hold hundreds of inmates have been built within the grounds of existing jails.

More than £430 million has been spent in the past two years on providing more than 4,000 extra spaces.

This capital expenditure is just the prelude to what Phil Wheatley, the Director-General of the National Offender Management Service, describes as the “biggest prison building programme in western Europe”.

Eight new prisons holding more than 5,400 inmates are planned in addition to the Titan jails proposed for the North West, West Midlands and South East.

Despite the expansion in prison places 88 of the 135 jails in England and Wales are overcrowded, with 26 per cent of the 82,566 inmates being held either two in a cell designed for one or three in a cell designed for two.

Dame Ann said: “I am concerned generally at a system under a huge amount of pressure which at the same time is facing resource cuts and also having to run larger and larger jails.”

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