David Shipley

Daniel Khalife has been on the run for three days. There’s a £20,000 reward for information leading to his capture and police have spent a night disturbing Richmond Park’s deer. As of Saturday morning reported sightings suggest he fled the lorry and has made his way to the Chiswick area. Rightly, many questions have been asked about HMP Wandsworth’s failures. Why was Khalife allowed to work in a high security risk role in the prison’s kitchens, providing him with easy access to an escape route? Why didn’t Wandsworth’s gate staff check the underside of the delivery lorry with mirrors, as is policy? No doubt the independent inquiry announced by Alex Chalk, the Secretary of State for Justice, will answer these questions in time.

Prison and probation staffing is approaching dangerously low levels’ said the Ministry of Justice in a document they published by mistake this week. It’s hardly surprising to those of us who know about our failing prison system. In June, the Justice Select Committee published the results of a detailed survey of prison staff showing that half of frontline staff don’t feel safe at work. Frontline staff are ‘band 3-5’; the officers, senior officers and custodial managers who spend their days working with prisoners. Their responses make grim reading. Over 80 per cent said morale was poor in their prison. More than 60 per cent of those officers said their mental health wasn’t taken seriously at work.

It’s my seventh night in HMP Wandsworth at the start of my 45-month sentence for fraud. I live on A Wing now, with a new cellmate, John, a heroin addict. He’s an older guy, short, very slight, sores all over his face, neck and hands. Prison is full of men like John: addicts who get sentenced to a few weeks, or months, in prison. Some are regulars, welcomed back by guards and prisoners. One man completes three sentences while I am imprisoned there. What good does it do banging men like this up? John is 52 and the best part of his life – which he has spent mostly in and out of prison – is behind him. The first of his many short sentences was in 1982, when he was just 14. In the years since, John has been in and our of prison, fighting his addiction to drugs and committing crimes.

John Major is wrong when he suggests only violent offenders should be automatically locked up – and as a non-violent ex-offender I should know. But focusing on the number of prisoners in Britain is a distraction from the real issue: reoffending. British prisons churn out prisoners who simply go on to commit more crime. Given what goes on behind bars, it's little surprise. A functioning, effective prison system should teach inmates to respect rules and behave in a proper manner so that they are more likely to be productive and law-abiding members of society on release. Many prisoners, however, learn a different lesson in jail: that breaking rules pays off.

‘Have you got a light mate?’ The shout came from the top of the slipway on Deal beach. Bill, who had just arrived on the shore with a boat of migrants, looked up. Between him and the car park, two men were walking towards him. It was 1am, but the bright full moon lit them up like daylight. As Bill passed, worried what the men wanted, he went to pull his fist out of his pocket.  ‘ARMED POLICE!’ the man yelled and sprang forward, rugby tackling him. Bill’s face and chest smashed into the pebble-strewn beach and his knees slammed into the hard concrete slipway. All around him crowded black-clad armed men. Bill lay there, too shocked to struggle. ‘I am arresting you for conspiracy to facilitate unlawful immigration…’.