PRISON bosses are demanding government action over violence, suicide and self-harm in jails, warning current levels are “the worst we have ever seen.”

The government must cut inmate numbers because jails across England and Wales are “full to bursting,” according to Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) president Andrea Albutt.

She will tell PGA delegates at its annual conference today in Derby that staffing levels have reached a critical stage in many cases, leaving prisons unable to cope.

Last week the prison population reached 85,375, just 1,124 below the “useable operational capacity.”

Since the early 1990s numbers have almost doubled, remaining at the mid-80,000 mark in recent years.

Penal reform campaigners have warned that any efforts to stabilise the prison estate will fail unless the number of inmates is reduced.

Ministers have resisted calls for direct measures to bring about an immediate cut in the prison population, and the government’s plans to provide 10,000 new prison places by 2020 are a “distant dream” according to Ms Albutt.

She will tell conference: “The government must be brave and reduce the prison population and don’t worry about votes. Don’t dabble: just do it — because morally it is the right thing to do.”

The PGA’s call for action follows warnings from the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) that staff are increasingly being driven from the service due to unprecedented levels of threats to their safety.

The widespread problem of psychoactive substances is a major issue — last year it was found that a third of prisoners had admitted taking “legal highs” behind bars.

Ms Albutt will say they “remain a constant threat to stability, reducing already depleted and sometimes critical staffing levels further as prisoners are taken to A&E suffering from the effects.”

Andy Darken, the deputy general secretary of the POA, told the Star that part of the issue lies in staff management.

He said: “To help the problem, we need a management who understand and who are not trying to do more with less.”

He said prison governors are taking a long time to “get to grips” with the epidemic of synthetic substances, and stronger security measures are needed at a time when the amount of searches have been reduced, which allows for the easy smuggling of substances.

The government has set out plans to recruit 2,500 new front-line officers in prisons but the POA has branded the effort “smoke and mirrors” in the face of the continually rising ratio of prisoners to staff, whose numbers have “diminished over a significant period.” The union says that salaries must be improved and the pay cap lifted.

Labour’s shadow justice minister Richard Burgon said: “Our prisons are in a deep crisis, driven by a Conservative cuts agenda that has seen one in four prison officers axed.

“Government talk about prisons being ‘places of reform and rehabilitation’ is empty rhetoric unless staff numbers are properly increased to tackle the epidemic of violence and overcrowding that means too many prisoners are locked up for 23 hours a day.”

He highlighted the government’s failure to address the crisis, pointing out that the Tories dropped their prison reform Bill from the Queen’s Speech earlier this year. He added that at the Conservative Party Conference last week, Justice Secretary David Lidington gave a speech “almost totally devoid of new policy ideas.”

Tory inaction stands in contrast to Labour, which has pledged to recruit thousands of new prisons officers, prevent further privatisation and end pay cuts.