Twenty jails are as bad as Birmingham, says minister
AS MANY as 20 jails are suffering from serious problems similar to those afflicting HMP Birmingham, the prisons minister admitted as it was revealed the Government knew 13 months ago that the facility’s staff had lost control to inmates.
Rory Stewart said HMP Birmingham was the nation’s “worst” jail but that the Government needed to be “realistic about the fact that there are challenges in many prisons”.
Mr Stewart’s comments are likely to prompt concerns about whether other jails could fail. They followed the emergence of a previously unpublished report into a 14-hour riot at HMP Birmingham in December 2016, which found prison officers had “gradually relinquished authority to the prisoners”.
The independent report was finished in June 2017, but it was only made public yesterday as the Government announced it was taking over the prison after a damning new inspection found inmates had effectively seized control of the jail.
Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons, said “somebody must have been asleep at the wheel” after an unannounced inspection discovered “fearful” staff had taken to locking themselves in their offices.
HMP Birmingham was the first privately run prison to be taken over by the Government, with G4S having run it since 2011. The fact ministers were made aware more than a year ago of the findings relating to the riot raises questions about why the facility’s performance was allowed to slide to the point where the Government had to step in.
The riot report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, found staff shortages had led to a breakdown in authority, with prison officers lacking the confidence to deal with unruly offenders.
It also concluded the riot “could and should” have been prevented and stopped in its first hour. The report said “the staff apparently felt unable to make decisions without a clear order, and so they withdrew, ceding control to the prisoners”.
“We formed the view that staff had, over the preceding year, and especially the preceding few months, become worn down by the chronic staffing shortages at HMP Birmingham, caused by a combination of high levels of sickness, attrition and disorganised deployment,” it said. “Over this time period, they had gradually relinquished authority to the prisoners who
were in effect policing themselves for much of the time.”
The publication of the riot report came as Mr Stewart said many other prisons were having similar problems to HMP Birmingham. Asked how many prisons were struggling, Mr Stewart told LBC Radio: “A number of them and the reason for that, putting a number on that, maybe as many as 20 of them, because the big driver of this is drugs.”
He continued: “Birmingham is, of the prisons that we are aware of, the worst, and that is reflected in the inspector’s report, which is why we have taken the step that we haven’t taken for 25 years in stepping in. But we have to be realistic about the fact that there are challenges in many prisons and that is why I selected 10 prisons to really focus on a pilot in addressing drugs and violence.”
Ian Acheson, a former prison governor, said: “There is still little sign that either the police, CPS or judiciary take assaults on staff seriously, resulting in derisory fines and concurrent sentences for humiliating attacks.”
Mr Clarke, who told the Government it needed to take over the running of the prison, said Ministry of Justice officials had been based at the jail “yet somehow there seems to have been some sort of institutional inertia that has allowed this prison to deteriorate to this completely unacceptable state”.
A Prison Service spokesman said it had “learnt the lessons from the review of the 2016 disturbance”. They added: “We have continued to monitor the prison closely and have issued G4S with a number of improvement warnings over the last eight months. Unfortunately, conditions have deteriorated further, which is why we have stepped in to turn the prison around.”