PRISONS are at bursting point partly because of a climate of fear driving the courts to lock up more criminals, says the Bishop of Worcester.

The Rt Rev Dr Peter Selby, Bishop to Her Majesty's Prisons, urged the courts to adopt more community style punishment orders as the prison population in England and Wales broke the 80,000 barrier for the second time this week.

He said: "I do think we are more afraid than we used to be and one of the ways we show this is to be more punitive. There are other penalties that would not be a soft touch which would help deal with the crisis.

"One of the prime sources of the problem is the re-offending rate, which is very high.

"The more we have overcrowding the less programmes we can run to help and the less programmes we can run, the more re-offending occurs and the more over-crowding there is."

He is also worried that an increasing prison population will lead to more self-harming and more inmates being placed on suicide watch.

Home Secretary John Reid called on the courts to jail only the most dangerous criminals and pursue other punishments for low-level criminals following a meeting of the National Criminal Justice Board on Tuesday.

According to the latest figures, published in December, Blakenhurst in Redditch had 1,063 inmates - just seven places below its capacity of 1,070. Gloucester Prison had 288 inmates - 35 places below capacity.

Long Lartin, South Littleton, Evesham, had 439 inmates - 15 places below its maximum.

The prison population in England and Wales rose by more than 200 on Monday alone while 500 people were held in emergency police cells.

The trend also reflects the situation in Worcester police station, Castle Street, Worcester, which had three people in its cells on Monday.

The Home Secretary told a Newspaper Society meeting that the public had a right to be protected from violent and dangerous offenders but that taxpayers' money should not be squandered on monitoring less serious offenders who could pay back the community through enforced work schemes.

Lord Justice Judge, the deputy chief justice and deputy chairman of the Sentencing Guidelines Council, has written to the courts urging them to hold fewer remand prisoners in custody, reserving this for defendants who are likely to abscond, commit further offences or try to intimidate witnesses.

The decision not to jail remand prisoners could free up between 800 and 900 extra prison places across England and Wales.