Andy Burnham has been urged to "rapidly expand prison capacity" amid national outrage over the possible early release of PC Andrew Harper's killers.
Speaking to GB News, crime journalist David Shipley argued the Labour Government has had "two years" to get a grip of the prisons crisis.
The Prime Minister has announced his reforms to the Government's early release prison scheme, but has failed to block the early release of PC Harper's killers.
In her first at-length interview with the People's Channel, PC Harper's mother Debbie Adlam called on Mr Burnham to "not let her down" and ensure her son's killers serve their full sentence.
She told GB News: "Please don't let us down. We and everybody else in my situation, we all deserve better, we should not be put in this position.
"We've been put into a place that we should never have been in the first place, and we're having to live and cope with this horrific situation."
Reacting to the backlash on GB News, Mr Shipley said the case "demonstrates the human reality" of the early release scheme.
He said: "He wasn't a number, he was a a young man with his whole life ahead of him. He left a widow, and his mother is, of course, still grieving and always will be.
"She said something really interesting, which I think resonates with a lot of people. It's the sense of fairness that these men aren't going to get the sentence they were given, and I think that's what we all feel quite uncomfortable with about early releases, I think it feels unfair."
Host Cristo Foufas challenged Mr Shipley, arguing that the Labour Government was "handed a prison service which didn't have the prison places that were necessary".
Agreeing with Cristo, Mr Shipley responded: "I think it is true that they inherited a prison system in crisis. There were not enough spaces built by the Tories during their 14 years in power.
"But Labour have had two years, and the deal with the early release scheme was supposed to be that they would deal with some other things along with it.
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"They would build more prison places, they would improve probation, sort out the tagging systems they actually can supervise people in the community. None of that's really happened."
Mr Shipley urged the Prime Minister to "rapidly expand" the prison estate, suggesting "various ways" that the Government could do it.
He said: "They could do better and they should be doing better. I think what they need to do is rapidly expand the prison capacity.
"There's various ways they can do that, such that we are jailing people on the basis of public protection, of punishment, rehabilitation of a sense of fairness, rather than jailing people or not on the basis of whether we have room.
"That is an insane thing for a modern developed economy to be doing."
Addressing the controversy surrounding the early release of PC Andrew Harper's killers, the Prime Minister has made clear he will "not give up" in trying to block the two men from being eligible for release.
He said: "I've been pressing every single day to go further. I don't want to see a single prisoner released early, and that's the spirit that I brought to the first three weeks that I've served as Prime Minister, and I've always worked like that.
"I've never taken no for an answer, not in the past, dealing with Hillsborough and other issues and not now when I'm facing the situation that I'm looking at now, it's always been my style. I won't give up and I believe there is more I can do."
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