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Prison officers are back at work after protesting outside jails across England and Wales about what they call an “unprecedented” level of violence.
Prisons Minister Rory Stewart, Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, and former inmate Mohammed discuss the crisis at HMP Birmingham.
A prison so violent and so squalid that some inmates were afraid to leave their cells, and now G4S is no longer in charge. The Chief Inspector of Prisons has said that in all his years of experience it is the worst he has ever seen. More staff and a new governor are being drafted…
Too many of Britain’s prisons are blighted by violence, poor safety and high levels of drug use – a situation, say ministers, which simply can’t go on. Today Prisons Minister Rory Stewart announced a £10m plan to curb the supply of drugs at ten of England’s “most challenging” jails. He called it a “back to…
Inmates at Nottingham Prison may have taken their own lives because they could no longer face conditions there, according to the chief prisons inspector. Peter Clarke said that for too long prisoners there had been held in a dangerous and disrespectful environment. His report found there had been eight self-inflicted deaths at the jail since…
The restraint methods used on asylum seekers transferred from the UK to other countries has been found to be excessive, unreasonable, and disproportionate according to the chief inspector of prisons months after the Home Office said the practice had stopped. Peter Clarke said they had serious concerns about the way a plane load of detainees were treated…
An inquest jury has found a catalogue of failures inside Wandsworth Prison contributed to the death of a teenage Lithuanian who hanged himself in his segregation block cell. Eighteen-year-old Osvaldas Pagirys was in prison for stealing sweets and wanted in his home country for mobile phone theft. The Prisons Ombudsman described a 37-minute delay in…
Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association and a prison officer at Liverpool Prison, and Conservative MP Bob Neill, who is chair of the Commons Justice Committee, discuss prisons.
Cockroaches, rats, pools of urine and blocked toilets. The “squalor” at Liverpool Prison is bad enough, but Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons has branded it the worst in the country. There have been six suicides at Liverpool Prison since 2015. Violence among inmates and against prison officers is rife. In the six months leading up…
The chief inspector of prisons has demanded Nottingham prison be placed under emergency measures after declaring the jail as fundmentally unsafe. It’s the first time Peter Clarke has had to place the Justice Secretary on notice that prison conditions have got so bad they require immediate action. The minister now has to 28 days to…
Our Senior Home Affairs Correspondent Simon Israel has given unique and detailed scrutiny to the issue of deaths in custody. He’s spoken extensively to the families of men who have killed themselves or died in prisons, or police cells – and looked into how these events are investigated in the aftermath. These are his key…
In his speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton, the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell announced a radical change in the way that a Labour government would pay for building new schools, hospitals and prisons. Huge public building projects would no longer be funded by private finance, and even existing PFI contracts would be “brought…
The research that Mr McDonnell cites actually estimates that it could cost £20bn to write off student debt by 2050.
The sculptor Sir Antony Gormley, renowned for his Angel of the North and his iron men installations, such as Another Place, has now curated an exhibition of art by prisoners. They are detainees in the UK’s prisons, secure hospitals, immigration removal centres, as well as ex-offenders now back in the community. He was inspired to put…
Bias and overt discrimination within the justice system could turn young offenders from ethnic minorities into the next generation of criminals, David Lammy has warned. His review has found evidence of bias throughout the system in England and Wales, from the courts to prisons. The government has promised to “look carefully” at his 35 recommendations.