The Ministry of Justice has projected a longer-term rise in prison population, up to 106,300 by March 2027.
British prisons have been pushed to the brink of riots, according to Nick Hardwick, who served as the chief inspector of prisons between 2010 and 2016.
Mr. Hardwick has warned that the UK prison system is in a “dangerously” poor shape, badly affected by overcrowding, staff shortages and surge in violence levels.
Mr. Hardwick has
told The Times that UK prisons could easily devolve into chaos, given the poor conditions for prisoners and the increasing levels of violence.
“Britain’s prisons are a tinderbox—one spark and it may kick off,” he said.
The former chair of the Parole Board for England and Wales, Mr. Hardwick said that prisoners were spending most of their time locked in their cells, for more than 20 hours a day.
“We are very close to the conditions prior to the 1990 riots in Strangeways. It’s a dangerous time. You’ve got a general level of frustration, so if you get a spark, that’s when stuff will kick off,” Mr. Hardwick said.
Last year, a former army network engineer,
Daniel Abed Khalife, escaped from HMP Wandsworth by strapping himself under a food delivery lorry. An investigation
found that on the day of his escape, eighty prison officers did not attend their shifts.
The government had subsequently acknowledged the need to hire more prison workers.
“I was in Wandsworth a bit before the escape and it was obvious that it was going to happen. They just didn’t have the staff to run it. I’m very used to going into prisons and I thought, ‘This is just not a safe place.’ It was out of control. I’m not surprised that someone manages to evade security and get out,” Mr. Hardwick said.
Prisons Crisis
This comes amid the overall staffing crisis in the prison system. The
HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) has found “worrying levels of inexperience” and “significant problems” in staff retention across the criminal justice system.
A HMCPSI report found that prison officers don’t have to attend a face-to-face interview with the governor during the recruitment process and not enough filtering is done by the prison service.
Overcrowding is another critical issue, affecting the prison system. There are 87,247 people in prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales, which is above the safety capacity set by the government, said the
Howard League for Penal Reform.
“Overcrowding is not evenly distributed across the prison estate, so some prisons hold many more people than they are designed to do so safely,” the charity reported.
Among overcrowded prisons in the UK are HM Prison Leeds, HM Prison Durham and HM Prison Wandsworth.
Last year, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB)
reported that conditions at Wandsworth were unsafe and “inhumane.” The board members said there were issues with staffing and overcrowding, as well as a rising number of assaults. The review took place before the escape of Khalife in September 2023.
“These are challenging times to live and work in prisons, with rising drugs, violence and self-harm and overcrowded, squalid conditions in many jails,” the
HM Inspectorate of Prisons said earlier this month.
It reported a stubbornly high rate of reoffending—at 37 percent—and the proportion of prisoners recalled to prison 13 percent higher than it was a year ago.
The government’s prison expansion programme aims to create 20,000 new prison places by the mid-2020s.
Ministers have also been exploring the option of moving prisoners to another country’s prison estate, provided the facilities, regime, and rehabilitation meet British standards.
The
Prison Reform Trust has suggested that transferring prisoners to foreign prisons was a “very expensive and a very complicated way” of increasing capacity.
