Officials are planning to spend tens of millions of pounds moving hundreds of female criminals out of jail to make room for more male offenders.

Documents accidentally released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) outline a scheme which would cost an initial £68million and then a further £47million a year to ‘divert’ women offenders out of jail.

Another scheme would see female offenders placed in another type of residential centre instead of jail, at a cost of £60,000 to £100,000 a year per head.

This would cost the taxpayer far more than a prison place, which averages £37,000 a year according to MoJ figures.

The plans emerged after bungling MoJ officials accidentally sent the plans to Tory frontbencher Robert Jenrick.

The Shadow Justice Secretary was mistakenly copied into an email setting out the proposals, which were due to be presented to prisons minister Lord Timpson today.

A Tory source said: 'Only this Labour Government would consider a scheme for criminals to avoid prison and somehow force taxpayers to pay an even bigger bill.'

Labour has already said it wants to reduce the number of women offenders in jail.

The measures are designed to free up space to allow women’s jails to be redesignated for male offenders, amid an overcrowding crisis which has already seen 38,000 criminals let out of prison early by Labour.

The internal memo from a senior civil servant, seen by the Daily Mail, said: ‘We would need a “best guess number of women” who we’d like to capture for the residential options.

‘Appreciate this is very “finger in the air” approach again but I assume we can narrow down or figure this out.

‘[One named official] thinks we should go for the maxmum [sic] number of women who could logically be accommodated in the community instead of custody.

‘Would this be based on offence type? Level of risk? We can then try and make some calculations as to bed costs per year.’

The official who sent the email set out ‘diversion costs’ of ‘£67,950,000 … and then £47.45m per annum’.

They added that another unnamed project would cost £7.2million a year.

The email set a deadline of noon today to finalise the proposals so they could be submitted to prisons minister Lord Timpson.

It was sent to 19 MoJ officials – and Mr Jenrick.

Labour’s early release scheme - introduced last year by then justice secretary Shabana Mahmood - allows most offenders to be freed after serve 40 per cent of the sentence handed down by the courts, rather than the previous 50 per cent.

So far more than 38,000 criminals have been out of jail early under the programme.

A wide range of further measures being set in motion by ministers will see even further sentence discounts.

An MoJ spokesman said: ‘We do not comment on leaks.

‘The Government has been clear the prison system it inherited is not working leading to more crime, not less, which is why we continue to explore more options to rehabilitate female offenders in the community.

‘The most serious offenders will still go to prison.’