THERE are fewer than 100 spaces left in the region's jails - according to Government figures.

Jails in England and Wales are more crowded than before, but bosses at the region's prisons say they are capable of handling the increase.

Official figures released by the Ministry for Justice yesterday show that the detention system has only 780 places left for new inmates.

A total of 81,135 criminals are being held in prisons and in cells at police stations, a spokeswoman for the department said.

The total prison capacity stands at 81,915.

A spokesman for the Prison Service in the North-East said the region's jails could cope.

Prisons in the region are home to 4,907 inmates, but the operational capacity stands at 4,992.

Steve Graham, staff officer at the North-East Prison Service, said: "There are no concerns in the North-East about the number of prisoners we have here.

"The operational capacity is what we consider to be the maximum number of prisoners we can hold within the North-East at any one time.

"That is a figure we can comfortably operate at and we don't go above that."

Lucie Russell, director of SmartJustice - a campaign attempting to cut the number of offenders who are sent to prison, said: "Prison numbers continue to soar and yet there is still no long-term strategy to tackle the crisis.

"Prisons are full with the mentally-ill and drug addicts for whom it is mainly an expensive way of making them worse. With nearly three-quarters of offenders re-convicted within two years of leaving prison at a cost of £50,000 per person per year, this isn't an effective use of taxpayers' money."

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said the Government had increased the number of prison places by 20,000 since 1997, and more prison space is to be built.

She said: "In the past two years, there has been an increase of about 3,100 places, which includes building additional places at existing prisons and the opening of a new prison.

"A new capacity-building programme, which will deliver 8,000 new prison places by 2012, was announced in July last year.

"The National Offender Management Service is monitoring the prison population and continues to investigate options for providing increases in capacity.