Wandsworth Prison issued urgent improvement notice after serious security failings found
hmp wesworth hit the headlines last year when an inmate escaped but as this program has since reported the prison is plagued with problems including rampant drug use overcrowding violence self harm and of course suicide now it’s become the sixth prison in a year and a half to be issued with an urgent notification for improvement after inspectors found serious security failings squalet conditions and prisoners in despair its Governor resigned this week but our social Affairs editor Jackie Long joins me now in the studio Jackie well I suppose there was a grim inevitability about moving towards this urgent notification we’ve been following this story for months of course the filth stands out in the mind this was a place at times running Rife with rats and mice also a place with frightening levels of violence a prison unable to provide at times the basics people told us they were having to steal pants and socks in there because of a lack of decent clothing now what we did discover operating very successfully was a very re organized drugs economy all of this essentially confirmed today by this urgent notification now what does that mean well it means the Chief Inspector alerts the Secretary of State to Urgent concerns well to be fair you would only need to be alerted to the state of wesworth prison if you’ve been asleep or you’ve not been listening so the big question now is what will what can the prison service and the government do in the past if there was an urgent notification like this on a prison like wesworth which is hugely overcrowded one of the ways of easing the pressure is to move 200 300 prisoners elsewhere the problem is right now there is nowhere else to move these prisoners too so this is all part of a much wider problem across the prison estate which will get bigger and bigger as we head towards the election but the story today told through the gates of wesworth prison I think wesworth like all of the prison system operates behind a cloak of secrecy what goes on inside prisons is is kept hidden It is Well by definition lived behind closed doors but the crisis boiling over inside wesworth for so long is spilling out into the open a failing filthy unsafe prison not working on almost any level essentially now put into special measures David Shipley served time at wesworth for fraud wesworth is one of the worst prisons in a failing prison system it’s a place that full of Filth violence drugs and human misery it often in my view hurts and kills people through neglect as well it’s a dreadful Dreadful stain on our society concerns about conditions that once were stretch back a number of years but there was a renewed and unflattering Spotlight on the Southwest London jail after a high-profile and embarrassing alleged Escape last September since then there’s been growing anger among among families former prisoners and people living in and around the jail about conditions there I’m ashamed for me I’m ashamed for all of you more than 200 people attended this public meeting just three weeks ago demanding changes it’s time to change it’s time to get the places to how they should be cuz it’s not fit for purpose then earlier this week the governor resigned the Urgent notification goes straight to the Secretary of State for justice Alex chalk and it is utterly devastating the Chief Inspector describes wesworth as a prison of deaths drugs and despair since the last inspection in 2021 violence has continued to rise more than 2third of prisoners surveyed felt unsafe 10 prisoners had taken their own lives seven in the past year most prisoners run employed and spent over 22 hours a day locked up and there was poor leadership at every level from the prison service and the ministry of justice so devastating but perhaps not surprising yeah I mean we we’ve heard many concerns coming out from wesworth although this is the sixth urgent notification the Chief Inspector has issued in around a year and a half even he was shocked by what he found at in such despair drugs are are Rife within the jail we smelt cannabis wherever we went when we walked around the wings and almost more worrying than anything is the fact that despite the very high-profile Escape that happened at the end of last year some of the security procedures at wesworth aren’t good enough for example officers are unable to account for how many prisoners are on the wing or off the wing during the Working Day and that’s absolutely astonishing this evening the prison Minister Edward arer said in a statement it was a deeply concerning report and that on top of additional support we’ve already provided since September to improve Safety and Security including nearly 1 million worth of upgrades we need to go further still there will be a strengthened management team he said an extra experienced staff to help turn wesworth around the report is shocking for those who’ve been raising concerns for years as independent monitors going into wesworth daily can they be convinced the authorities are now listening could this have been avoided getting to this stage if they had been responded to in a more constructive and immediate way I can’t say that everything that’s being reported in the in in in this inspection would not have happened but inevitably there would have been there would have been significant changes the secretary of state has 28 days to respond meanwhile we understand families of prisoners are looking at potential legal action against the government to test whether sending people to prisons with conditions like wwor could be unlawful
HMP Wandsworth hit the headlines last year when an inmate escaped. But as this programme has since reported, the prison is plagued with problems, including rampant drug use, overcrowding, violence, self-harm and suicide. (Subscribe: https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe)
Now, it’s become the sixth prison in a year and a half to be issued with an Urgent Notification for improvement after inspectors found serious security failings, squalid conditions and prisoners in despair. Its governor resigned this week.
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35 comments
Remember, these inmates will be returning back to society someday. It is awful to hear about deplorable conditions in these facilities
UK prisons have been crumbling & overcrowded for decades.
Who would have thought that if the UK's population increases by 15% since the millennium, that the prison population might also increase by, at least, a similar amount?
All these old jails are the same. pentoville bedford etc. run down and depressing
Wandsworth ain't no joke all the old London nicks are I've done 2 of them and wanny is the pits !GATE13SW6CREW cfc
Are you fucking kidding me? Wandsworth is the best prison iv'e been to, Try HMP Exeter. The cells don't even have windows, Just gaps in the brickwork, no I'm not joking. Cockroaches everywhere. Too many celebs in Wanno so they want more money. It is the best and most functioning Jail iv'e been to by far! Shows how much the media knows.
Cannabis has been a medicine in the UK for years, prison staff welcome it over spice and actual drugs. There's a moron inspecting the prisons, no wonder they are fucked.
Get these cons working in chain gangs
So is every other prison in the uk
7 suicides in one year, damn that's high.
They are prisoners. They are criminals so leave them rot
wandsworth gets a 4 star rating from me, the food is good it drops 1 star because the guests are a bit noisy
Tory Britain
My Son is in here at the moment! He's has problems with alcohol for the past 16 years. He needs proper help and won't get that in prison where he is just a number and a commodity as many others are, in men's and womens prisons. Have they just put him in here to finish him off!!!!! He's 36 now.
Hardly surprising, the place is full of criminals!!!
Do ya fink they shouldn’t of closed Camphill and all those other jails and sacked all the experienced staff? Our infiltrators are dismantling every institution
pull it down
Boils down to not enough staff after years of cuts
Cant do the time? Dont do the crime
With all the Illegal Migrants coming over on a daily basis and knife crime happening every day its so obvious to me we need a lot more Prisons, and better trained staff to manage Prisons.
Prisoner should be put to work skate parks should be built the creativity using wood different designs giving in mates capentery skills! Each prison should have more sports & skate park made!!
Wowwww hmm 🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾
Why don’t they make the prisoners do chores in the prison so they can gain things they have jobs in the prison don’t they
What do you expect when you have boatloads of people arriving in the uk each week..the population jumped by over 6 million almost overnight yet the infrastructure stays the same..can’t see the problem. Welcome more in. 😂😂😂
THEY NEED TO LEARN FROM THOSE STRICT RUSSIAN AND THAT MEXICO PRISONS.
The country is collapsing due to bad administrative governance.
It's a prison 😂. What else do you expect for criminals?
How drugs get into prison?
Shouldn't do the crime ifya can't do the time .
Thrown over fences – sent over with drones – screws bring drugs in – screws sometimes have relationships with prisoners – also visits with people and people pass drugs to the inmate on visit ! Many many ways – also new prisoners coming in smuggle stuff up there 👆🏾 dirty purse 😂
Palestinian France Prisoner escapes😮Planned over 3 months,ex military/police /prison insiders are involved,the Prisoner & his crew are involved in huge drug trafficking, which French police missed their drug trafficking
And nothing will get done and it will only gel worse, to many experiend staff have left and now you have people who used to stack shelves in tescos etc then has 6 weeks training and then expected to be able to deal with serious criminals drug addicts menel health and many more issues
Know retired screw n all keys have been duplicated n it's a wild place run by the prisoners.
Cost of prison £40,000 a yr.
We could spend the money to get results not intensify problems.
Send prisoners to Rwanda , cheaper .
The jail system was brought over by the European settlers:
Jails were not created as a direct result of enslaved people being freed; they existed long before the abolition of slavery. The practice of incarcerating individuals in jails or prisons dates back to ancient and medieval times and was present in the American colonies from their earliest days.
However, after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the use and nature of the jail system did adapt in ways that disproportionately affected newly freed African Americans. This can be understood through the following developments:
1. **Black Codes**: After the Civil War, many Southern states enacted Black Codes, which were laws designed to restrict the freedoms of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force. These laws criminalized a wide range of behaviors, leading to the arrest and incarceration of many African Americans for minor infractions.
2. **Convict Leasing**: Following the abolition of slavery, Southern states developed the convict leasing system, where incarcerated individuals (disproportionately African Americans) were leased to private businesses for labor. This system provided a way to continue exploiting African American labor under conditions similar to slavery.
3. **Jim Crow Laws**: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation and further criminalized the behavior of African Americans, contributing to their higher rates of arrest and incarceration.
Thus, while jails were not created as a result of the end of slavery, the criminal justice system, including jails and prisons, was adapted and used to maintain racial control and economic exploitation of African Americans in the post-emancipation era.