FEWER people should be sent to prison to help cut the number of suicides, the head of a government review stated yesterday.

Labour’s Lord Harris, who was drafted in earlier this year to study how to reduce self-inflicted deaths in custody, said that resources were being stretched due to the number of individuals being jailed unnecessarily.

Prison suicides have risen by nearly 50 per cent since 2010, with 87 inmates taking their own lives in the 12 months to September, according to Ministry of Justice figures.

Lord Harris told the Radio 4 Today programme: “The critical issue is why some prisoners are (in jail) in the first place.

“Are there interventions that could have been done, could have saved the government money by stopping them ending up in the criminal justice system in the first place, or not necessarily ending up in prison?”

He said that while a core of prisoners obviously needed to be in custody others might not have needed to be incarcerated if more resources were available, “to make sure those individuals were supported and prison achieved its objectives in terms of rehabilitation.”

Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan branded the surge in suicides was “a complete disgrace.”

He siad: “The Tories caused this prison crisis and they are still failing to learn the lessons of previous deaths.”

Prison officers’ union POA and campaigners have repeatedly warned that the system is in a state of crisis as a result of government cuts and overcrowding.

Howard League for Penal Reform campaigns director Andrew Neilson said: “This review is vitally important and Lord Harris is absolutely right to look at broader questions than simply the treatment of young people when they are in prison.

“Cuts to staffing and regimes have played their part in hindering suicide prevention but that is not the whole story. One of the fundamental questions the review must ask is ‘why are these young people there in the first place?’”

National Offender Management Service chief executive Michael Spurr said reducing the number of self-inflicted deaths in prisons was a top priority.