'Catastrophic' Wandsworth Prison to get £100m

Additional staff and £100m of funding is to be redirected to HMP Wandsworth following what the prisons' chief inspector called a "catastrophic inspection", the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has announced.

Charlie Taylor's inspection in May found "shocking condition" and failures in leadership "at every level" at the south-west London prison.

My Taylor previously issued an "urgent notification" to the the then-Lord Chancellor and secretary of state for justice over the prison visit.

One former prisoner has described being jailed at Wandsworth as like "a form of torture".

The full report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, which was released on Tuesday, found that 10 prisoners had taken their own lives since the previous inspection - seven of which had occurred in the past 12 months.

Rates of self-harm within the prison were also "high and rising", the report said, while 40% of emergency cell bells were not being answered within five minutes.

During the inspection, staff were even oblivious to a prisoner in crisis who had self-harmed in his cell until inspectors brought the incident to their attention.

Darrell, a former prisoner in Wandsworth, told BBC London the conditions in the jail were "just horrendous".

"For someone like me who has mental health conditions, yeah, it's very, very difficult, so the noise is a lot," he said.

"I believe that I do have a form of autism, and to be put in that environment is just like constant torture. [It] just made my mental health condition a lot, lot worse."

The report said 80% of men were sharing cells designed for one person.

Darrell, who asked not to share his surname, said he was confined to his cell for 23 hours a day "basically going insane".

He said the cells often lacked basic facilities such as a cover around the toilet and a chair to sit on. They also had poor ventilation and often got "very hot".

"You're in there for eight months in a row dripping with sweat constantly - it's a form of torture," he added.

Mr Taylor's report also found overall rates of violence had increased at the prison and the use of force was higher than at most other reception prisons, while more than half of inmates said they found it easy to access drugs.

He said: "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, [HM Prison and Probation Service] and the MoJ whose own systems clearly identified the prison as struggling."

Mr Taylor added there was a "degree of despondency" among prisoners and while "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".

Following the publication of the report, an MoJ spokesperson said the inspector's concerns would be addressed "immediately" with the deployment of extra specialist staff.

They added that £100m will be "redirected" to Wandsworth "from across the prison service that will be spent over five years to deliver urgent improvements".

Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said: “This is the reality of a prison system in crisis. Cells are overcrowded, infrastructure is crumbling and our hard-working prison staff are at risk of violence and harm."

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