Powder-keg prisons are ready to explode

WE knew the state of Britain’s prisons was bad – but not this bad.

Following yesterday’s revelations that Birmingham jail was effectively being run by the inmates – with prison officers locking themselves in their offices for safety – we now discover that up to 20 more jails are teetering on the brink of anarchy.

The Ministry of Justice stands accused of ‘being asleep at the wheel’, while prisons minister Rory Stewart admits that one in six jails is ‘struggling’ with essentially the same problems as Birmingham. And those problems could hardly be worse.

Another damning report released yesterday, on the reasons behind the 2016 Birmingham jail riot, told a chilling story. ‘There was no law, no order’, said one inmate, adding that ‘every day was a party’.

Drug-taking, violence and self-harm were rife and the squalor in which prisoners were forced to live was truly shaming. Because Birmingham was managed by the security firm G4S, some on the liberal Left have used this crisis as an excuse to bang the drum for the re-nationalisation of all prisons.

But this is just a canard. Apart from Birmingham, all the other jails on the danger list are already run by the Prison Service.

The truth is that the roots of this grotesque shambles have nothing to do with the public/private debate. They run much deeper than that. Outdated, neglected buildings, overcrowded, insanitary cell conditions, too few prison officers, too little control – and of course, the rampant scourge of drugs and the violence that goes with them.

All these factors have contributed to turning our jails into powder kegs. If we keep ignoring them, they will surely explode.