Sign up to our free newsletter for the top North Wales stories sent straight to your e-mail Sign up now! Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Wales has become a dumping ground for English prisoners - according to the head of a prison reform charity.

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Prison Reform, tweeted the comments saying the country was being turned into a new Botany Bay.

Botany Bay was an 18th Century prison colony in Australia where criminals were often sent to live out the rest of their lives.

She made the claims in response to the new super prison in Wrexham, where less than 10% of the current inmates are Welsh .

At the end of August - six months after it opened - only 42 out the 548 inmates at the 2,100 capacity facility, were from the North Wales region.

Mrs Crook tweeted: “Wales is becoming the Botany Bay of 21st Century England shoving its urban poor onto the hulks and shipping them off to Wales.”

She then tweeted: “Mega prison in Wrexham , another mooted for S Wales, plus three already in S Wales. Is England turning Wales into a new penal colony!

Speaking to the Daily Post, she criticised HMP Berwyn saying: “It was sold as being a prison for short-term prisoners and remands but they are advertising for prisoners in the south of England who will agree to go there.

“It’s not a nice place, the rooms have to be shared and the toilets are open, no one else is building prisons like this anymore. And whether you are English or Welsh it will be a very unpleasant place.

"If there is going to be this money spent in Wales it should be spent on social issues and crime prevention.”

HMP Berwyn is designed for Category C prisoners - those who cannot be trusted in open conditions but who are unlikely to try to escape.

It may also take some Category B prisoners classed as, if they escape would pose a large risk to members of the community.

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now

Plans are also currently under way to build a super-sized 1,600 capacity category C prison on Baglan Moors, Port Talbot.

According to Wales Online, the prison at Baglan Moors is one of four to be drawn up for England and Wales , including Full Sutton in east Yorkshire, Hindley in Wigan and Rochester in Kent, under a £1.3bn plan by the Government to transform the prison estate creating 5,000 modern prison places.

Arfon Jones, Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales agreed with Mrs Crook about the situation, saying there needs to be a stop to building prisons in Wales.

Mr Jones said: “I do have sympathy with Frances Cook’s concerns about the scale of what’s being proposed.

“The planned superprison in Port Talbot is much bigger than you would ever need to meet local demand and there are already other prisons in South Wales so I can fully understand why people there are unhappy about the prospect of it being built.

“Similarly, we have known from the outset that HMP Berwyn was built to cater for prisoners from outside Wales as well as those from this area.

“My colleague Bethan Jenkins AM and others are also opposing the Port Talbot prison on similar grounds to what Frances is saying. We have enough prisons in Wales and we don’t need any more.”

The Ministry of Justice has been asked to comment.