Prisoners use plastic cutlery to dig through walls

JAILS are so dilapidated that prisoners are using plastic cutlery to dig holes through their cell walls in a bid to escape, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has claimed.

POA officials wrote to Winchester prison chiefs last year warning that three inmates had “dug through their cell walls” and demanded the wing be cleared to allow structural engineers to check the building’s fabric.

The union says prisoners at the category B jail have now managed to dig holes with cutlery in cell walls near the doors on a dozen occasions, with at least two inmates subsequently found on their wing’s landings at night.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) denied that anyone had escaped their cells. “It’s not an escape risk,” said a spokesman.

Winchester jail’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) says the Victorian prison’s buildings, which date back to 1846, require “significant” maintenance. Describing accommodation as unacceptable and the conditions as “unpleasant and dirty”, the IMB said: “Cells regularly need repair because of wear and tear or vandalism.”

Mark Fairhurst, POA chairman, said: “Prisoners are tunnelling their way out. They are getting through the walls and end up on the landing. The prison should shut the wing down and refurbish it but they are reluctant to do that. They are also trying to dig through the walls at windows. It’s a crumbling Victorian prison but because they are on a high floor, you need bedsheets or rope to attempt to escape.”

He said one boarded-up hole in an internal cell wall seen by an POA official in December was big enough for a prisoner to have crawled through.

“On 19 November 2018 at a meeting with the governor, the issue of a prisoner digging his way out of a cell on B wing was raised,” said Mr Fairhurst.

“The governor’s reply was that engineers had confirmed the structural survey found the wing was sound inside and out and safe. But not so safe that plastic spoons can’t be used to make a hole in a cell wall.

“I find it incredible that the MOJ should deny that prisoners have accessed the landing when my own national officials have witnessed the holes in the cell walls for themselves.”

A Prison Service spokesman said: “There is absolutely no truth to the suggestion that damage to cell walls at HMP Winchester has led to prisoners escaping from their cells or that there is a risk of them doing so.”

Carillion originally had the maintenance contract last year before its collapse but left a “considerable backlog of faults” due to its inefficiency, said the IMB which hoped its replacement, Government Facility Services, would “offer better provision”.