NEEDLESSLY remanding in custody people accused of petty offences cost up to £230 million in 2013, a prison reform charity warned yesterday.

Ministry of Justice figures show that over 35,000 people kept on remand last year were then either acquitted or given non-custodial sentences.

“Our prisons are squalid and our prisoners are idle, yet the courts are continuing to remand innocent people and people accused of petty crime at huge public expense,” said Howard League for Penal Reform chief executive Frances Crook.

“It’s time to end this unjust system, which is costing the nation money that could be better spent.”

The charity said remand was “the key driver of the rising prison population” and put “further pressure on the country’s overcrowded and under-resourced prison estate, where suicides and assaults have risen alarmingly after the number of officers was cut by 30 per cent in three years.”

The Magistrates Association said the Howard League research was “misguided.”