Shropshire Star

Running unsafe jails is a crime, former prisons boss claims

Phil Wheatley highlighted reductions in officer numbers in a highly critical assessment of the Government’s handling of the estate in England and Wales.

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The Ministry of Justice has come under scrutiny over the prisons safety crisis (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

A former prisons chief has warned that running jails unsafely is a “crime” in a scathing critique on the state of the service.

Phil Wheatley highlighted reductions in officer numbers in a highly critical assessment of the Government’s handling of the estate in England and Wales.

He  said: “It is simply not acceptable in a comparatively rich democratic country to run unsafe prisons that do not provide decent conditions.

“This is not simply a moral issue, but a legal one too; to comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act, which creates legal duties to both staff and prisoners.

“In short running prisons unsafely is a crime and one to which the Health and Safety Commission ought to give more attention.”

But eight years on, he said it was “undeniable” that jails in England and Wales are “in crisis”.

Writing in the 2018 edition of The Prisons Handbook, Mr Wheatley acknowledged that Justice Secretary David Gauke, is “too new to have had much impact to date”.

But he claimed that Mr Gauke and prison minister Rory Stewart “appear intent on blaming the crisis they have inherited on New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) – rather than budget cuts, poor political decisions and frequent changes of political direction”.

Mr Wheatley added: “There is no quick fix, the sad truth is that it is relatively easy to make a good prison bad, but much harder to repair the damage.”

Assaults in prisons
(PA Graphics)

There have also been a number of large-scale disturbances, while the availability and use of drugs behind bars has rocketed.

The Government’s efforts to tackle the crisis will come under fresh scrutiny on Thursday when the latest official safety in custody statistics are published.

At the weekend the Ministry of Justice revealed that it had passed a target to recruit 2,500 additional prison officers seven months ahead of schedule.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman described new psychoactive substances as a game changer for prison safety.

“That is why we have trained more than 300 specialist drug dogs, introduced body scanners and intelligence-led searches, and made it a criminal offence to possess psychoactive substances in prison.

“We are clear that safety and decency are key tenets of turning our prisons around.

“We ploughed £100m into recruiting more than 3,000 prison officers well ahead of schedule, all of whom will be on landings by Christmas.“

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