BRITAIN’S creaking penal system has become a threat to national security, campaigners warned in response to “appalling” inspection reports on Long Lartin and Manchester prisons.
Conditions at the Manchester jail were so bad that inspectors issued an urgent notification, giving Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood 28 days to respond with an action plan for improvement.
They found a chronic rodent infestation and prisoners burning holes in supposedly secure windows so they could continue to receive regular deliveries of drugs by drone.
At Long Lartin in Worcestershire, a lack of in-cell toilets had led many prisoners to use buckets in their cells and throw bags of excrement out of the windows.
Howard League for Penal Reform chief executive Andrea Coomber said: “These appalling inspection reports are a warning that problems in prisons spill out into the towns and cities around them.
“A system that has been asked to do too much, with too little, for too long is now so compromised as to become a threat to national security.
“Drugs are a destructive force in prisons. Where there is drug abuse, there is also debt and violence. Previous governments have spent millions trying to tighten security, but in Long Lartin and Manchester we can see how far that goes.
“The best way to stop the supply of drugs into jails is to reduce the demand for them in the first place. This means ensuring that people are occupied with work, training, education and exercise, not stuck in filthy, rat-infested cells for hours on end.”
Prison Officers Association (POA) general secretary Steve Gillan said the union had been making the same calls for the past 15 years.
“The Prison Service has been neglected for over a decade in a race to the bottom,” he added.
“It can only be described as financial vandalism and total neglect.
“That is why the POA have long called for a royal commission and not a half-baked and half-hearted approach to fixing problems that have existed for decades.
“Instead of simply cutting budgets to make it cheaper and warehouse prisoners, there needs to be a root-and-branch review and the POA want to be at the centre of that review as we have the solutions to the problems that face our prisons.”