A CATASTROPHIC inspection of HMP Wandsworth in May led Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons to write to the then Secretary of State invoking an Urgent Notification for improvement.
The full report from that inspection, now released, details the extent of the problems which led to this action, noting that Wandsworth has come to be “symbolic of the problems that characterise what is worst about the English prison system”.
Wandsworth was not safe: there had been 10 self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection, seven of which had occurred in the last 12 months. The rate of self-harm was high and rising, and yet around 40 per cent of emergency cell bells were not answered within five minutes. Staff were oblivious to a prisoner in crisis who had self-harmed in his cell until inspectors brought it to their attention. Overall rates of violence, including serious assaults, had increased and use of force was now higher than most other reception jails. More than half of men said it was easy to get drugs and the smell of cannabis was ubiquitous. Drug testing had been suspended, but the most recent tests found 44% of prisoners were actively using drugs.
Since the alleged escape in 2023, HMPPS had invested almost £900,000 in additional resources in safety and security. Despite this, and the threat to stability posed by illicit drug use, leaders had not got the basics of security right including an inability to account for prisoners during the working day. An action plan created after the last escape in 2019 had not been completed and key elements of the jail’s security strategy had not been reviewed in ten years.
Wandsworth was severely overcrowded with 80 per cent of men sharing cells designed to hold one person. Living conditions were very poor with damaged flooring and furniture, broken windows and leaking fixtures being common. Many cells had no screening around the toilet, despite holding two men. At the time of the inspection, the prison had over 900 outstanding jobs in its facilities log, reflecting the scale of the challenge. The prison was dirty with persistent vermin problems and inspectors found rodent faeces and urine across residential units.
Around three quarters of men reported spending more than 22 hours a day in their cells in these appalling conditions. Inspectors carrying out two random roll checks were unable to verify this because record keeping was so poor, with staff unable to account for where prisoners on their wings were. Access to education, work and skills was very poor with most prisoners unemployed. While the library could have provided some respite from this, less than a tenth of planned library sessions in the three months preceding the inspection had taken place.
Inexperience across every grade of operational staff was preventing them from bringing about much needed change. Most leaders were temporarily promoted, and new staff were learning from inexperienced frontline managers. The working culture was not supportive and senior leaders were not visible around the jail. Despite a full complement of officers, sickness, restricted duties, and training commitments meant that over a third could not be deployed to operational duties each day; this led to curtailed regimes, cross-deployment, and burnt-out staff.
Staffing shortfalls underpinned a myriad of challenges in daily life. For example, it took weeks for new arrivals to have telephone numbers approved so they could speak to their families. Prison officer absences also resulted in prisoners being unable to access healthcare services, resulting in important health assessment and treatment interventions being curtailed. The costly new health centre that was supposed to open in the summer of 2022 was still unused.
The offender management unit (OMU) was particularly short-staffed and the amount of one-to-one work which both probation- and prison-employed POMs were carrying out with their prisoners was minimal. Public protection procedures to safeguard children and protect other potential victims had also deteriorated substantially since the last inspection. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 35 per cent of men said that their experience at Wandsworth had made them less likely to reoffend in the future, a finding that was far worse than in similar prisons.
Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, said: “The level of chaos we found at Wandsworth was deeply shocking. The prison population crisis has undoubtedly compounded the pressures on the jail, but the appalling conditions at Wandsworth did not appear overnight and are the result of sustained decline permitted to happen in plain view of leaders in the jail, HMPPS and the MoJ whose own systems clearly identified the prison as struggling.
“There was a degree of despondency amongst prisoners at Wandsworth that I have not come across in my time as Chief Inspector. Many well-meaning and hard-working leaders and staff persevered at Wandsworth, but they were often fighting against a tide of cross-cutting, intractable problems that require comprehensive, long-term solutions. This will not be a quick fix. For this troubled prison to begin to recover, Wandsworth needs permanent experienced leaders at all levels who are invested in the long-term future of the prison to improve security, safety and guide their less experienced colleagues. We will be watching closely to see whether this is the case.”
Commenting on the report, Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “Wandsworth is emblematic of a system that has been running on fumes for many years, through our overuse of prison and chronic underinvestment in the prisons estate. Too many of our local inner-city prisons are afflicted with similar problems, including too few staff, and prisoners held in overcrowded and squalid conditions which are contributing to very high rates of violence, self-harm and self-inflicted death.
“Most worryingly, the government has inherited a prison system which is rapidly running out of effective options to respond. Previously, the first thing a prisons minister would consider was to rapidly decant a large number of people from the prison to give staff much needed breathing space to address concerns. But with prisons in the midst of a capacity crisis; a huge courts backlog; and an anticipated influx of far-right rioters, there is simply no give in the system to do this. These will be deeply worrying times for those who live and work in our prisons.”
* The Wandsworth inspection report and the Urgent Notification are available to read here.
* Sources: HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Prison Reform Trust