Suicides and drug use surge in England’s crowded jails, says watchdog

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The chief inspector of prisons has called for “sustained, decisive action” to make jails safer in England and Wales after highlighting a surge in illicit drug use, self-harm and violence behind bars.

Against a backdrop of a growing crisis in the prison population, HM chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, found some jails were “severely overcrowded and understaffed” while others were “filthy and dilapidated”.

The 2023-24 annual inspector’s report released on Tuesday found men and women were spending “far too long” locked in their cells, with “woeful” provision of education and training in the majority of the prisons inspected.

The inspectorate rated “purposeful activity” that might reduce the risk of reoffending as “poor or insufficiently good” in 30 of the 32 closed prisons covered.

Key indicators of how unsafe prisons are, such as the rates of assaults, self-harm and suicide, all remained high or increased in the year up to March 2024, the period covered by the inspections.

The report came on the same day as the first of around 5,000 offenders were set to be released under emergency measures taken by Sir Keir Starmer’s government to ease pressure on the prison estate, which he has described as “close to breaking point”.

The early-release scheme for England and Wales reduces the time served on some custodial sentences from 50 per cent to 40 per cent.

Taylor welcomed the scheme as providing “short-term breathing space” but also noted “worrying shortfalls” in work to prepare inmates for release “even without the added pressures these schemes impose”.

Calling for a “much bigger conversation about who we are sending to prison, for how long and what we want prisoners to do while they are inside”, Taylor said prisons were failing in their duty to prevent reoffending.

He added that the “brutalising conditions” faced by those living and working within jails in their current state “fundamentally undermines” efforts to achieve this.

He said: “If we use them simply to warehouse people in squalor, surrounded by drugs and violence and failing to address their unmet mental health needs, what can we really expect when they are released?”

Britain has western Europe’s highest rate of incarceration at more than 145 prisoners per 100,000 of the population following years in which the building of new capacity failed to keep up with tougher sentencing laws.

The number of people in prison in England and Wales reached a record high on Friday of 88,521, according to the Ministry of Justice, compared with operational capacity in the entire estate of 89,543.

Although large sums of money were being spent on building new jails or cells, the report found “an estate that was becoming increasingly dilapidated” with many prisons struggling to recruit sufficient numbers of staff.

Over the period of inspections, Taylor issued urgent notifications signalling serious concern about conditions at Bristol, Bedford and Woodhill prisons, and at Cookham Wood youth offenders institute. In Bristol prison there had been eight suicides and one murder.

At HMP Woodhill, 48 per cent of prisoners said they felt unsafe at the time the inspectorate carried out a survey, while staff were subject to bullying and intimidating behaviour by inmates, according to the report.

“A dirty and neglected infrastructure and poor regime contributed to the chronic problems [at the prison],” it noted.

There were 90 suicides overall in adult men’s prisons in 2023, representing a 27 per cent increase on 2022; self-harming rose by 24 per cent but in some places had more than doubled. In women’s prisons self-harming increased by 11 per cent.

Violence was a priority concern in 14 adult prisons, the report said, and was “often a product of the illicit drug market”. Justice ministry data showed an overall 20 per cent increase in violence across adult male prisons in 2023.

The Labour government has said it inherited a justice system in crisis when it won elections in July, with prisons on the point of collapse. It has said it will publish a 10-year strategy on prison supply and launch a comprehensive review of sentencing by the end of the year.