HMP Doncaster: Jail almost full - and that was before Rotherham riots

Riots broke out at the Holiday Inn Express in Manvers Way, Rotherham, on the afternoon of August 4, 2024, after hundreds of anti-immigration protesters arrived at the hotel, where asylum seekers were being housed. 

In the days afterwards, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper condemned the ‘utterly appalling’ behaviour of those responsible, and said South Yorkshire Police ‘have full government support for the strongest action against those responsible’.

Since then - less than three weeks on from the riots - extremely swift justice has already been administered for those involved, with 51 people charged in connection with the disorder so far. Of those 51 individuals, 32 have been convicted after entering guilty pleas, 19 of whom have already been sentenced.

All of the adults sentenced so far have been jailed, while the juveniles - a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old - received a 16-month detention and training order, and a 12 month contract with the Barnsley Youth Offending Service youth offender panel, respectively.

While the courts appear to be concluding that a term of imprisonment is the appropriate sentence for the majority of those brought to justice over the riots so far, recently-released figures from the Ministry of Justice have revealed that at the time of the disorder there were just eight prison spaces available at HMP Doncaster. The figures show that on July 26, 2024, HMP Doncaster - which is Yorkshire’s largest prison and the closest to Sheffield Crown Court - 1,137 of the prison’s 1,145 places were occupied.

This comes as Operation Early Dawn, a long-standing plan which allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to magistrates’ court until a space in prison is available, was activated by the Ministry of Justice on Monday morning (August 18). In addition to Yorkshire and the North East, the measure has been put in place in the Cumbria and Lancashire; and Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire regions.

Get our new Breaking Newsletter so you don’t miss the biggest stories, as they’re happening A spokeswoman said she expected the regions affected will ‘move in and out’ of the contingency plan amid ‘short periods of significant pressure’. Asked if the emergency measures posed a risk to public safety during a visit to Belfast, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the Government was making ‘really tough decisions, and nobody wants to take them’, as he repeated criticisms that Labour had inherited problems with prisons due to a “basic failure” by the previous Conservative administration to have enough prison places available.

“We’ve had to deal with that with the additional strain of the disorder of recent weeks”, he said, adding: “But we’ve been able to prove that if you commit disorder, you can expect to be put through the criminal justice system quickly, and we will continue in that vein.

“But I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a challenge. We will take the necessary tough decisions on this, but we should never, ever have been put in the position that we’re in today.”

Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, told BBC Breakfast the policy would lead to ‘justice delayed’.

He said the most serious offenders would still end up in court and be guaranteed a prison cell, but less serious offenders would either spend longer in police cells or be bailed.

“It’s justice delayed at the moment, because we’re not clogging up police cells, so they might have to delay some of their operations,” he said.