Labour promises thousands of new prison spaces to ease overcrowding crisis
Labour has pledged to deliver 14,000 new prison places to tackle the overcrowding crisis if it gets into government.
The party has announced plans to unblock the planning system in order to expand the prison estate and ease capacity.
Prisoners have been let out of jail early in recent months as part of emergency measures to tackle a chronic shortage of spaces.
Overcrowding has also resulted in offenders being held in police cells and officers being asked to consider making fewer arrests.
Labour said the prison estate is “bursting at the seams” due to inaction and mismanagement by the Conservatives.
The Tories previously promised to deliver 20,000 new prison places by the mid 2020s but only 6,000 have been created so far.
Labour said it will deliver the remaining 14,000 if it gets into government.
Shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “The crisis in our prisons is a powder keg waiting to explode. Worse still, we never had to get to this point.
“The dangerous overcrowding of our prisons was foreseeable and avoidable, but this government has not had the will or courage to act.”
She added: “We will build the prison places they promised but never delivered and we will drive down reoffending.”
It is understood the new spaces will be created by a mix of expanding the size of current prisons and building new ones.
Labour plans to designate prisons as sites of national importance, placing the power to approve a planning decision in ministers’ hands, in order to speed up the process.
In 2019, then prime minister Boris Johnson pledged to create an additional 10,000 prison spaces by 2025. This was on top of the 10,000 places his predecessor Theresa May had promised to build in 2016.
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Prisoner released early talks to Sky News
The commitment was reaffirmed in the 2021 Spending Review, which said the government would spend £3.8m to provide 20,000 prison places by the mid 2020s.
But the project has been bogged down by planning constraints with reports suggesting the extra spaces will not be delivered until 2030.
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Labour is also proposing to bring together prison governors and local employers to create employment councils to drive down reoffending, link offenders to training and jobs, and reduce the burden on capacity in the long term.
In a further law and order offering, the party wants to set up 80 new specialist rape courts across and England and Wales to fast-track cases as part of plans to tackle violence against women and girls that will be included in Labour’s manifesto this week.
It will also comprise a pledge to introduce specialist rape units in every police force, where staff trained to deal with domestic abuse will work with victims, Sky News understands.
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A Conservative Party spokesperson insisted the Tories have “overseen the largest expansion to the prison estate since the Victorian era”.
They added: “The last Labour government let 80,000 criminals out early and failed to build the prisons they promised.
“Labour under Keir Starmer has continued to vote against more resources for our police and tougher sentences.”
While the Tories have also made pledges on law and order, they will be focusing their campaign on Sunday on welfare reforms, with plans to get people back to work to cut the costs of benefits.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are vowing to tackle ambulance delays as they turn their attention to health and care, ahead of the party’s manifesto launch next week.
Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, marks their 50th birthday amid a year of rising institutional and geopolitical adoption of the world’s first cryptocurrency.
The identity of Nakamoto remains one of the biggest mysteries in crypto, with speculation ranging from cryptographers like Adam Back and Nick Szabo to broader theories involving government intelligence agencies.
While Nakamoto’s identity remains anonymous, the Bitcoin (BTC) creator is believed to have turned 50 on April 5 based on details shared in the past.
According to archived data from his P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto once claimed to be a 37-year-old man living in Japan and listed his birthdate as April 5, 1975.
Source: Web.archive.org
Nakamoto’s anonymity has played a vital role in maintaining the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin network, which has no central authority or leadership.
The Bitcoin wallet associated with Nakamoto, which holds over 1 million BTC, has laid dormant for more than 16 years despite BTC rising from $0 to an all-time high above $109,000 in January.
Satoshi Nakamoto statue in Lugano, Switzerland. Source: Cointelegraph
Nakamoto’s 50th birthday comes nearly a month after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile, marking the first major step toward integrating Bitcoin into the US financial system.
Related: Bitcoin at 16: From experiment to trillion-dollar asset
Nakamoto’s legacy: a “cornerstone of economic sovereignty”
“At 50, Nakamoto’s legacy is no longer just code; it’s a cornerstone of economic sovereignty,” according to Anndy Lian, author and intergovernmental blockchain expert.
“Bitcoin’s reserve status signals trust in its scarcity and resilience,” Lian told Cointelegraph, adding:
“What’s fascinating is the timing. Fifty feels symbolic — half a century of life, mirrored by Bitcoin’s journey from a white paper to a trillion-dollar asset. Nakamoto’s vision of trustless, peer-to-peer money has outgrown its cypherpunk roots, entering the halls of power.”
However, lingering questions about Nakamoto remain unanswered, including whether they still hold the keys to their wallet, which is “a fortune now tied to US policy,” Lian said.
Related: Bitcoin’s next catalyst: End of $36T US debt ceiling suspension
Is Satoshi Nakamoto wealthier than Bill Gates?
In February, Arkham Intelligence published findings that attribute 1.096 million BTC — then valued at more than $108 billion — to Nakamoto. That would place him above Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the global wealth rankings, according to data shared by Coinbase director Conor Grogan.
Satoshi’s new addresses. Source: Conor Grogan
If accurate, this would make Nakamoto the world’s 16th richest person.
Despite the growing interest in Nakamoto’s identity and holdings, his early decision to remain anonymous and inactive has helped preserve Bitcoin’s decentralized ethos — a principle that continues to define the cryptocurrency to this day.
Magazine: 10 crypto theories that missed as badly as ‘Peter Todd is Satoshi’
The United States stock market lost more in value over the April 4 trading day than the entire cryptocurrency market is worth, as fears over US President Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to ramp up.
On April 4, the US stock market lost $3.25 trillion — around $570 billion more than the entire crypto market’s $2.68 trillion valuation at the time of publication.
Nasdaq 100 is now “in a bear market”
Among the Magnificent-7 stocks, Tesla (TSLA) led the losses on the day with a 10.42% drop, followed by Nvidia (NVDA) down 7.36% and Apple (AAPL) falling 7.29%, according to TradingView data.
The significant decline across the board signals that the Nasdaq 100 is now “in a bear market” after falling 6% across the trading day, trading resource account The Kobeissi Letter said in an April 4 X post. This is the largest daily decline since March 16, 2020.
“US stocks have now erased a massive -$11 TRILLION since February 19 with recession odds ABOVE 60%,” it added. The Kobessi Letter said Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement was “historic” and if the tariffs continue, a recession will be “impossible to avoid.”
Source: Anthony Scaramucci
On April 2, Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
Trump said the reciprocal tariffs will be roughly half the rate US trading partners impose on American goods.
Related: Bitcoin bulls defend $80K support as ‘World War 3 of trade wars’ crushes US stocks
Meanwhile, the crypto industry has pointed out that while the stock market continues to decline, Bitcoin (BTC) remains stronger than most expected.
Crypto trader Plan Markus pointed out in an April 4 X post that while the entire stock market “is tanking,” Bitcoin is holding.
Source: Jeff Dorman
Even some crypto skeptics have pointed out the contrast between Bitcoin’s performance and the US stock market during the recent period of macro uncertainty.
Stock market commentator Dividend Hero told his 203,200 X followers that he has “hated on Bitcoin in the past, but seeing it not tank while the stock market does is very interesting to me.”
Meanwhile, technical trader Urkel said Bitcoin “doesn’t appear to care one bit about tariff wars and markets tanking.” Bitcoin is trading at $83,749 at the time of publication, down 0.16% over the past seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
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