INMATES are being put up at Basingstoke police station because of overcrowding at Winchester Prison.

Two prisoners have been ferried back and forth from the jail and Basingstoke's police cells since Monday - and the town's top police officer says this could put extra pressure on the force.

Superintendent Alison Queen, the area commander for Basingstoke, said: "They are staying with us overnight and going back to the prison the next day. But when there's still no room, they come back to us.

"We have been full up at times, but if this is the case after 6pm, we try to process people as quickly as possible to get rid of them. If we run out of cells, our prisoners will have to go elsewhere."

HMP Winchester, a category B prison, has a capacity of 543 male and 94 female prisoners.

At the time of its last inspection, three per cent of the male population were serving life sentences, while most of its inmates had been convicted of drugs offences, violence, driving offences or burglaries.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said overcrowding has become a problem across the country in recent months, leading to the use of police cells as a temporary measure, although it avoided using the cells for women or juveniles.

She admitted that there were cost implications involved with taking the prisoners to and from the cells, but said it was necessary to manage the prison population safely, and that criminal justice reform was looking at changing sentencing guidelines and implementing more robust community sentences.

The Government has also allocated £60million towards another 2,300 prison places, but the Home Office spokeswoman could not say whether any of these would be in Hampshire.