20 MORE JAILS ON THE BRINK
Minister reveals scale of crisis as officials accused of being ‘asleep at the wheel’ over riot prison
UP to 20 more prisons could be on the brink of spiralling out of control, ministers admitted last night.
In a shocking indictment of the crisis engulfing our jails, prisons minister Rory Stewart said around one in six were ‘struggling’ with the same problems as HMP Birmingham.
Ministers yesterday took the dramatic step of moving the jail – which was run by private firm G4S on a 15year £30million contract – back into Government control for six months after watchdogs said it had fallen into a ‘state of crisis’.
But Ministry of Justice (MoJ) officials were accused of being ‘asleep at the wheel’ as the Category B jail plunged into turmoil. One inmate at the prison, which was hit by a 15hour riot in December 2016, said that ‘every day was a party’. On a day of fresh revelations about the state of the nation’s jails, it emerged:
Ministers had been alerted in May to ‘very serious’ concerns about HMP Birmingham.
Experts said officials had missed ‘ repeated warnings’ about the appalling state of the 169-year-old inner-city prison, which last month held 1,269 criminals.
Mr Stewart rejected calls to hold an independent inquiry into what went wrong at the drug-ridden jail.
One man waiting to be picked up following his release said officers were ‘more terrified’ than the inmates.
The conditions at HMP Birmingham were laid bare yesterday in a shocking report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke.
It detailed a catalogue of violence, drugs, self-harm and squalor, with staff having lost control. Inspectors found blood, vomit and rat droppings on the floor, frightened staff locking themselves in their officers or sleeping on the job, and inmates taking drugs and carrying out assaults with ‘near impunity’.
But in an interview with LBC yesterday, Mr Stewart admitted that ‘as many as 20’ prisons in England and Wales were suffering ‘similar’ problems. The rest are understood to be publicly-run jails.
He said: ‘ We have to be realistic about the fact that there are challenges in many prisons.’
On Friday, he published a hit-list of ten prisons where a £10million action plan would be introduced to tackle drugs, smuggled mobile phones and poor conditions.
The ten were Hull, Humber, Leeds, Lindholme, Moorland, Wealstun, Nottingham, Ranby, Isis and Wormwood Scrubs. Earlier this year Mr Clarke branded Nottingham ‘fundamentally unsafe’, saying conditions were so bad inmates were feared to be killing themselves. Separate MoJ data published last month revealed almost half of prisons were on the brink of a failing performance. Officials named 15 as causing ‘serious concern’. Another 39 were of ‘concern’, meaning 54 of our 117 jails were considered a worry.
Mr Stewart said he ‘no longer had confidence’ in G4S after putting in special measures to improve safety and security at Birmingham in a highly unusual intervention. G4S has run the prison since 2011.
On Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Mr Clarke said: ‘How is it that in 18 months a prison which is supposedly being run under the auspices of a tightly-managed contract, how has that been allowed to deteriorate?’ He said MoJ officials were at the prison permanently, yet had succumbed to ‘institutional inertia’ – with the ‘only reasonable conclusion’ that the MoJ had failed.
He added: ‘Surely somebody must have been asleep at the wheel?’
In May, the prison’s independent monitoring board wrote to ministers warning of ‘ very serious concerns’ that it was struggling.
Chairman Roger Swindells said ‘basic humanity, safety and purposeful activity is not being delivered’, adding: ‘Prisoners, rather than staff, appeared to be controlling many of the wings.’ He told the Mail that while action was being taken, ‘too little’ had been done, adding: ‘More should have been done after the riot.’
Last night Tory MP Bob Neill, chairman of the Commons’ justice select committee, pointed the finger at MoJ officials, saying: ‘Repeated warnings about the scale of the crisis at Birmingham – and other prisons – have been missed and there is a history of this happening ... This should not have gone without being picked up.’
Jerry Petherick, managing director of G4S Custody & Detention Services, said: ‘The wellbeing and safety of prisoners and prison staff is our key priority and we welcome the six- month step- in and the opportunity to work with the MoJ to urgently address the issues faced.’ Steve Gillan, of the Prison Officers’ Association, said staff had ‘been placed in an unacceptable position by failed Government policies’.