‘Anything that adds to the combustibility of prisons is a risk’ – prisons inspector

We spoke to His Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor, and started by asking whether an already stretched prison system can cope with an influx of convicted rioters.

Charlie Taylor: Certainly it puts additional pressure on the system. The bath, as we know, is already in danger of overflowing. And if there’s a big influx of new prisoners coming in, then of course that immediately puts it under even more strain. So the government has got the early release scheme running at the moment. There’s a new early release scheme which will come in September, when prisoners, the remission period will be reduced to 40% rather than 50%. But we’ll see how this plays out in time. Certainly we don’t want to be in a situation that we have been in the past where we’re having to use police cells for extended periods of time. Certainly that’s not helpful at all. So we’ll see how this plays out.

Matt Frei: The government has said that the system is ready to absorb people. Do they even know about the conditions inside these prisons to say that?

Charlie Taylor: Well, I’d like to think that people are reading our reports. And certainly what we highlight in our report in Wandsworth is enormous levels of overcrowding. Wandsworth was originally built for about 1100. There were 1500 or so prisoners there when we inspected, and they’ve been up to 1600 prisoners there. It’s completely overcrowded. It’s on a very small footprint. There isn’t enough space for any sort of purposeful activity to really go ahead in the place. And prisoners are locked in their cells for 22 hours a day.

Matt Frei: Prisoners locked in their cells for 22 hours a day. And then you might get some new prisoners, far right extremists. Again, that’s a recipe for potential disaster as well, isn’t it?

Charlie Taylor: Well, I think there’s a lot of very complicated people in prisons, and certainly anything that adds to the combustibility of prisons is always a risk.

Matt Frei: But are you worried about far right grooming in prisons?

Charlie Taylor: Well, I think there’s always the potential for this to happen. I mean, prisons tend to be, not places like Wandsworth, but the more sophisticated prisons, where people are spending longer sentences, they tend to be quite tuned in to be able to pick up some of that sort of activity. But certainly in places like Wandsworth, which are at the best of times flying by the seat of its pants, with such a churn of prisoners going through it every week, it’s difficult to monitor everything that’s going on.

Matt Frei: So we found out in our research that since 2010, the decline in experienced prison officers is about 40%. You just haven’t got the right people to run the places.

Charlie Taylor: Yes, and Wandsworth is a case in point. A lot of incredibly inexperienced staff. Some of them are brilliant. Some of them will go on to be great prison officers. But if you’ve got very inexperienced people being led by almost equally inexperienced prison people, which is exactly what we found in Wandsworth, then no one really knows what they’re doing. And prisoners, staff didn’t know when anyone was going to get unlocked. They weren’t even able to count prisoners properly.

Matt Frei: You’ve been the Inspector of Prisons since 2020, is that right?

Charlie Taylor: Indeed.

Matt Frei: The situation that you described yourself is catastrophic. How did it get so bad?

Charlie Taylor: Part of this is since Covid, prisons haven’t begun to unlock prisoners anything like the rate that we would want to see. So too many prisoners are languishing, locked in their cells for long periods of time, with not enough to do. And the quality of the offer when it comes to purposeful activity isn’t good enough. What do bored prisoners do? Well, the temptation is to go away and take drugs. And that’s what we’re seeing in lots of jails.

Matt Frei: As a country, should we be ashamed of the state of our prisons?

Charlie Taylor: Well, they’re not good enough. It’s very simple. They’re simply not good enough. As I say, there are some great beacons of some really good practice, but there are lots of prisons which just aren’t doing as well as they need to be. And the worry, whether it’s about shame or not, my worry is that people are coming out from prison and their risk of re-offending has not been reduced. And that to me is unacceptable.

Matt Frei: And finally, if you had to point to one thing that has led to this catastrophic decline, what is it?

Charlie Taylor: Well, I probably say drugs, overall. I think the prison service is up against serious organised crime, discovering more and more sophisticated ways of getting drugs into prison. There are enormous mark-ups on drugs. There are people who are already addicted to drugs, and there are people who are bored out of their mind who are getting pulled into drugs. So the influx of drugs into prison and the lack of any purposeful activity. So people feel they’re wasting their time, they’re not making any progress, and they’re not reducing their risk of reoffending when they come out.