Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced a fresh set of emergency measures to curb prison overcrowding as she warned jails are on track to be down to “zero capacity” by November.

Mahmood unveiled changes to prison recall on Wednesday, with criminals serving between one and four years of jail time being returned to custody only for “a fixed 28-day period.”

She said the move would free up about 1,400 prison places and buy ministers time to overhaul a system “on the brink of collapse.”

However, Mahmood’s Conservative counterpart Robert Jenrick said: “Labour have decided to let out criminals who reoffend early. They’re siding with criminals over the public.

“Labour’s Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has chosen to put the public at risk rather than deporting the foreign criminals who are clogging up our prisons.”

The chairman of the Prison Officers Association (POA) Mark Fairhurst said building new prisons will “not improve the current population crisis.”

“The Government would be better off spending billions of taxpayers’ money on modernising the prison estate, funding an under-resourced probation service, providing more secure mental health beds and ensuring we have robust community sentences that the public have confidence in.

“Building new prisons will take years and will not improve the current population crisis. If new prisons are to be built, I hope the Labour Party’s commitment to the biggest insourcing in a generation is applied and the new build prisons remain in the public sector.”

With that in mind, do you trust this Government to fix the prison system? Have your say in the poll and we’ll bring you the results later today.