Ministers who failed to see the prisons crisis approaching have been condemned by a police leader.
Officers who are working hard to catch crooks have been "let down" by Home Secretary John Reid and other ministers, said the president of the Police Superintendents' Association, Rick Naylor.
He pointed out that the Home Office had been warned about an impending fiasco for years, but failed to act.
Mr Naylor's comments came after Mr Reid and other Cabinet ministers wrote to judges and magistrates asking them to imprison only the most dangerous and persistent criminals.
Jails in England and Wales are now chock-full - with more than 80,000 offenders - and hundreds are being housed overnight in police stations and even court cells.
Mr Naylor said: "The Government should have seen this coming. They really are letting down the efforts of police officers who investigate offenders, together with everyone else who is trying to secure their convictions."
He added: "Ministers have been harping on about tougher sentences for violent crime for a long time. It has consequences if you ask the police to work harder and ask the judiciary to hand out stiffer sentences - but they have failed to build the places to put all these offenders.
"Prison officers, in particular, have been telling the Government for years that there is a growing crisis. Now that crisis is here it seems to have come as a surprise to some people."
At Prime Minister's Question Time, Tony Blair insisted all options were being kept open to combat overcrowding, while Conservative leader David Cameron took a swipe at alleged rivalry between Chancellor Gordon Brown and Mr Reid.
The Tory leader said that rather than breaking up the Home Office into two separate departments - a plan revealed by Mr Reid's spokesman at the weekend - Mr Brown really wanted to "break up the Home Secretary".
