Police officers are routinely having to drive offenders more than 60 miles to charge and detain them after cuts to the number of custody suites and cells.
Police representatives believe the reductions help to explain a collapse in the number of arrests, which have halved even as crime has risen.
Drink-drivers are being freed because it takes so long to get them to custody that they are below the alcohol limit by the time they reach the police station, an investigation by The Sunday Times has found. In some towns, any arrest requires a round trip of up to four hours.
Most offenders arrested in Berwick-upon-Tweed, on the Scottish border, are now taken to Newcastle upon Tyne, 63 miles away, or Wallsend, 65 miles away,