Chaos in the prisons
The Ministry of Justice took emergency control of HM Prison Birmingham this week following a damning inspection of the privately-run facility. Inspectors found chronic levels of drugtaking, self-harm and violence among inmates, and squalid conditions: cells were infested with rats and cockroaches; the floors of communal areas were stained with old blood and vomit. Staff at the jail, which has been run since 2011 by the contractor G4S, were locking themselves in their offices for safety, and sleeping on the job. Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales, said he had never seen anything like it, revealing that he had been forced to retreat from one of the wings because of the intoxicating effect of the drug fumes. A new governor and extra staff are to be drafted in to HMP Birmingham, and a quarter of its 1,200 inmates are to be transferred to other sites. Rory Stewart, the Prisons Minister, admitted that “as many as 20” jails in England and Wales were suffering “similar” problems to Birmingham. He pledged last week to resign if he fails to reduce levels of drugs and violence in ten target jails within a year.
What the editorials said
The report on Birmingham makes for “truly chilling reading”, said the Daily Mail. Yet the jail is far from unique. Only last month, Clarke’s annual report into the overall state of prisons concluded that conditions were “the most disturbing ever” – those at HMPS Liverpool and Nottingham were singled out as being particularly dire. The human rights of prisoners come low on the list of most people’s concerns, said The Independent. “Offenders, by definition, have transgressed and are in prison to be punished; but the denigration they suffer goes beyond what society has a right to expect to be meted out even to the most heinous of criminals.”
The prison crisis is in large part down to “an explosion in inmate numbers”, said the FT. The prison population of England and Wales has doubled to more than 80,000 since 1993, when Michael Howard, then the Tory home secretary, introduced a tougher approach to sentencing. The prison service has struggled to cope with these higher numbers at a time when its budget has been slashed. The Government should follow the example of Scotland, which has taken pressure off its prisons, and reduced reoffending rates, by replacing many short custodial sentences with community service.