Jail crisis ‘worst it has ever been’

Violence and suicide rife, warns watchdog One in 7 inmates end up hooked on drugs

PRISON conditions are the ‘most disturbing’ ever seen, a damning report has revealed.

Inspectors said living standards in many jails were so disgraceful they ‘have no place in an advanced nation in the 21st century’.

Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke said jails were rife with violence, drugs, suicide and self-harm, overcrowding and squalor. A ‘shockingly high’ one in seven inmates became hooked on narcotics while behind bars.

He singled out conditions at the rat and cockroach-infested HMP Liverpool, where some convicts were forced to live in damp cells with exposed electrical wiring, broken windows and leaking toilets, as the worst that inspectors had ever seen.

Standards at HMP Nottingham, a Category B prison, were so bad that inmates were feared to be killing themselves – with eight men taking their own lives in the two years to January. The watchdog branded the jail as ‘fundamentally unsafe’.

Mr Clarke’s annual report for 2017-18 laid bare the scale of crisis engulfing jails in england and Wales. He pointed out that the ‘huge’ increase in violence had taken place against a backdrop of large cuts in the numbers of guards.

Amid concerns that staff cannot cope with chronic overcrowding, jails have been hit by record levels of assaults and self-harm while drug problems have increased. He said many prisons had struggled to maintain ‘ even basic standards of safety and decency’.

He acknowledged that some prisons had made ‘ valiant’ efforts to improve. But he said: ‘Others, sadly, have failed to tackle the basic problems of violence, drugs and disgraceful living conditions.

‘I have seen instances where both staff and prisoners seem to have become inured to conditions that should not be accepted in 21st century Britain. It’s just become the normal.’

Mr Clarke cited Ministry of Justice figures which showed the total number of assaults on staff and inmates had doubled since 2012, when the austerity drive began to bite, to a record 29,485 last year – one every 18 minutes. This included 8,429 attacks on guards, tripling over the same five-year period.

Incidents of self-harm had soared from 23,158 in 2012 to 44,651 last year.

Government figures show the number of prison officers has fallen by 8,000 – almost 20 per cent – since 2010.

He said there was ‘ a pretty obvious correlation’ between the decline in resources and staff and the ‘massive increase in assaults and self-harm’.

The watchdog said he was ‘particularly concerned’ that 13 per cent of inmates said they had developed a drug problem behind bars. This was a ‘major factor’ in violence and debt.

Mr Clarke said jails had been too slow to introduce technology to help crack down on smuggled drugs, weapons and mobile phones.

He said an X-ray machine at HMP Belmarsh has been successful at picking up items concealed in clothes or bodies which would not have been detected in strip searches. The review also found: Thousands of imates were in the ‘totally unacceptable’ situation of having to share cells designed to hold one inmate;

A fifth of inmates in men’s prisons and 38 per cent of young people were locked up for 22 hours a day. Some were locked in cells for so long they had to eat meals inches from unscreened toilets;

The effectiveness of education, skills and work had declined – hampering efforts to rehabilitate prisoners;

Many prisoners were released without proper support in finding accommodation, dealing with benefits and finance or finding work, meaning they were at risk of falling back into crime.

Mr Clarke warned that if governors did not take his recommendations seriously, ‘violence and self-harm will increase, and the impact of drugs will dominate daily life’.

Andrew Neilson, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: ‘This excoriating report is yet another reminder of the scale of the chaos in overcrowded and under-resourced jails.’

Peter Dawson of the Prison Reform Trust said: ‘This report puts Britain to shame. We should not tolerate this situation in a civilised society.’

Justice minister Rory Stewart said the Government had listened carefully to Mr Clarke’s recommendations. On Tuesday, the MoJ unveiled a £30million package to improve safety and security in prisons.

‘Pretty obvious correlation’