The supply and use of illicit drugs are ‘undermining every aspect of prison life’ says a damning report from HM Inspectorate of Prisons.
The threat from organised criminals is not only destabilising jails but also stopping them from delivering the kind of rehabilitative work that cuts reoffending rates, says the document, which calls on the government to ‘take far more seriously the widespread ingress of illegal drugs into prisons’.
The influx of drugs is creating ‘huge pressure’ for people living and working in the prison estate, says chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor, who added that it was ‘unsurprising, though deeply worrying’ that assaults on staff had risen by 13 per cent in a year while those on other prisoners were up by 10 per cent.
‘Far too little’ is being done to keep drugs out of prisons, says the report, with drones making regular deliveries to prisons like Manchester and Long Lartin, both of which hold ‘some of the most dangerous men in the country’. Positive random drug test results frequently reach more than 30 per cent, it continues, with a ‘staggering’ 59 per cent of randomly selected prisoners testing positive in one category C prison. However, mandatory drug testing has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels, the document points out, ‘making it difficult to estimate national drug use or compare outcomes between prisons’.
Overcrowding and boredom caused by lack of activity were driving the demand for drugs, the report states, with 28 of 38 prisons inspected delivering ‘poor or not sufficiently good’ outcomes in purposeful activity. Six of the prisons rated poor were category C, establishments that ‘should have been providing prisoners with the skills they needed to resettle successfully in the community’. The poorest scores for safety, meanwhile, tended to be in local and category B training prisons, with many inmates ‘trapped in a cycle of boredom, frustration and poor behaviour, which fuelled the demand for drugs and increased violence, debt and self-harm’.
In prisons like Manchester (formerly Strangeways) inexperienced staff were being routinely ‘manipulated or simply ignored’ by prisoners, while many other jails saw little interaction with staff, exacerbating levels of frustration and poor behaviour. ‘Prisoners often struggled to get busy or inexperienced officers to help them with simple requests, and women were particularly affected, with a lack of day-to-day support causing such distress that some resorted to self-harm,’ the document states. A separate report from the inspectorate earlier this year found that the rate of self-harm in UK women’s prisons had ‘skyrocketed’ and was now eight times higher than in men’s, with ‘astonishing gaps in basic decency’ including women being given ill-fitting prison-issue men’s clothes to wear.
Capacity pressures on the prison system had brought it ‘dangerously close to collapse’ last year, according to former justice secretary David Gauke’s sentencing review, which recommended a shift away from sentences of less than 12 months. While the government has accepted the majority of the review’s recommendations, the impact will take time to be felt, says the chief inspector’s report, while the government’s controversial early release schemes ‘have only temporarily alleviated’ the capacity crisis. Many prisoners were spending most of their days in ‘cramped, shared cells, where broken furniture and windows, and infestations of vermin, were common’, it adds.
A report almost a decade ago from the previous chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke, warned that drugs were behind a ‘huge increase’ in prison violence, with ‘shockingly high’ numbers of people developing drug problems while detained.
‘This has been another very difficult year for all those living and working in prisons in England and Wales,’ said Taylor. ‘I cannot overstate my concern about the rapid and widespread ingress of illicit drugs, which is severely impacting the essential work of staff in reducing the risk of prisoners’ reoffending. Only when the prison service is able to keep drugs out of jails so that staff can focus on getting prisoners involved in genuinely purposeful activity, can we expect to see them play a meaningful role in rehabilitating, rather than simply warehousing, the men and women they hold.’
The report painted a ‘bleak but sadly familiar picture of a prison system in deep crisis,’ said Prison Reform Trust chief executive Pia Sinha. ‘When over 30 per cent of drug tests are coming back positive, when prisoners are locked in squalid, overcrowded cells with little to do, and when mental health needs are going unmet, it’s not just a prison problem – it’s a public safety issue. Prisons should be places of rehabilitation, not warehouses of despair.’
‘Drugs, and the violence associated with them, in part fill the void that is created by overstretched and under-resourced prisons failing to offer positive regimes that get people out of their cells and involved in activities,’ added chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Andrea Coomber.
With the number of drug seizures by prison officers now standing at more than 21,000 annually, the figures were ‘truly shocking’, said an editorial in the Independent – ‘or they would be, were it not for the pervasive sense of resignation about everything that pertains to our prisons. The ubiquity of drugs then risks being seen as just one aspect of a disastrously failing system.’
HM inspector of prisons for England and Wales, annual report 2023-24 available here