PRT comment: HMP Wandsworth receives Urgent Notification

Commenting on the announcement that HMP Wandsworth has been issued with an Urgent Notification by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons today, Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“This damning report reveals a failure of leadership from top to bottom. Ministers cannot be exempt from the criticism levelled against the prison by the chief inspector.

“The report reflects wider problems afflicting too many local inner city prisons, 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.

“Worryingly, the government is rapidly running out of effective options to respond to the growing pile of urgent notifications issued by the prisons inspectorate.

“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, there is simply no give in the system to do this.

“We can expect experienced staff to be redeployed to Wandsworth from other parts of the country.

“While this may bring temporary relief, it is a sticking plaster solution to more fundamental problem rooted in our overuse of prison and chronic underinvestment in the prisons estate.”