David Shipley

When a vast, complex system fails it first does so slowly, and then all at once. I fear that the justice system in England and Wales is about to collapse. The prisons are effectively full. An average of 1,362 more people are imprisoned each week. What will happen when there’s no room for them? Last week the government announced that prisoners would be released 70 days early, hoping this would hold off disaster. While we were told that only low-risk prisoners would be subject to early release, on Tuesday that story unravelled when HM Inspector of Prisons published a report on HMP Lewes. The inspectors found that the early release scheme was 'undermining…safe release planning and risk management'.

Some prisoners will be freed up to 70 days early to ease overcrowding in jails. This isn't the first time the government has resorted to letting prisoners go before the end of their sentence: Alex Chalk, the Justice Secretary, announced in March that prisoners would be released up to 60 days early. This followed a 35-day early release policy announced in October. How long will ministers pretend that extending early release every couple of months is a serious solution to the dire state of Britain's prisons? 'Lower level offenders' are the most likely to reoffend Letting prisoners go early makes a mockery of the idea that sentencing should be transparent.

What happens when government policy meets an entirely unfit system? Today’s report on HMP Peterborough by HM Inspector of Prisons reveals a jail unable to handle the government’s early release scheme. Last October, in an effort to stop our prisons running out of room, Alex Chalk announced the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, under which prisoners would be released 18 days early. Last month, with the prisons almost full again, he amended the policy so that prisoners can now be released 60 days early.  Every recalled prisoner costs money to return to prison Today HM Inspector has revealed what this means in practice.

In prison, drugs kill. HMP Parc, a private prison in Wales managed by G4S, has seen six inmate deaths over a period of three weeks. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), the official body tasked with investigating deaths in prisons, soon realised that 'at least' two of those deaths were drug-related. Imprisoned at HMP Wandsworth, I shared a cell with a regular spice smoker The PPO believe that these deaths involve ‘spice’ combined with 'another family of drugs'. Spice is a synthetic cannabinoid, popular in prison because it comes in the form of a liquid which can be impregnated on innocuous looking paper, making it easy to smuggle in. When smoked, it produces a sickly smell, and is often dangerous or deadly. It’s everywhere in our prisons.

The horror of the crimes of Joshua Jacques, who murdered his girlfriend and three members of her family in south London while high on drugs, is made all the worse because Jacques should never have been free to kill. The 29-year-old, who was jailed for life last week for the brutal murder of his partner Samantha Drummonds, her mother Tanysha, her grandmother Dolet, and her grandmother’s partner, Denton, in April 2022, had a string of convictions, including for drug offences and robbery. At the time of the murders, Jacques had been out of prison for less than six months. He was considered high risk, yet nothing was done to stop Jacques from destroying three generations of a family.

Prisons are terrifying places when guards lose control. The authorities retreat and angry prisoners are left in charge – until the cavalry arrives. That comes in the form of the National Tactical Response Group (NTRG), which resolves hostage situations, work 'at height' when prisoners have scaled buildings or refuse to leave safety netting on the wings or are standing on a table. If things aren't resolved amicably, the NTRG can instruct Tornado riot squads to storm prison wings. Worryingly, Britain's prison guards are becoming more reliant on these methods to regain charge of out-of-control jails. Last year, these squads were deployed nearly 800 times – a 40 per cent increase since 2022. The figures appear to show the trouble with relying on inexperienced guards to man our jails.

In prison, I met a lot of men who said they shouldn’t be there. They presented detailed mitigations, and listed all the flaws in the prosecution’s evidence. The truth is though, that most of us had been sentenced for crimes we’d committed. There were very few men inside who shouldn’t have been there. Mark, though, did not belong in prison. I first met Mark in HMP Wandsworth when he became my fourth cellmate. He was a quiet lad, with dark floppy hair which he hid behind, avoiding my gaze. It didn't take long to realise something was very wrong with him. We watched the news; we watched the soaps: Mark couldn’t tell the difference between them. He thought everything on TV was factual.

Have you ever been strip searched? I have. The date it happened – 7 September 2020 – is etched on my mind. That morning, as part of a security sweep on HMP Wandsworth’s H Wing, a group of male and female officers ‘span’ my cell. With the door closed, the women left, and one of the officers asked me to remove my vest, then shorts, then boxers. Next, they asked me to squat, while one of the men bent down and shone a torch at my anus. I felt vulnerable. My knees shook. When he said: 'Sorry mate, I promise you this is worse for me than it is for you', I felt a little better. I think I even laughed. But if a woman had been present I would have felt far more humiliated. Fortunately the law is clear about how such searches should take place.

What do prisoners eat on Christmas Day? Some tabloid reports might lead you to think ‘lags’ are ‘gorging’ themselves on turkey with all the trimmings. Even the official prison menus from the Ministry of Justice make lunch on 25 December sound appetising: inmates at HMP Manchester, a high-security jail, get ‘Traditional Turkey Dinner with stuffing, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, vegetables (and) sausage wrapped in bacon & gravy’ served up with ‘Christmas pudding & white sauce and Christmas cake’. As you would imagine the reality is very different.

In his House of Commons speech yesterday, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk shifted the blame for problems with our prison system, announced liberalising reforms and promised a bright future. Ultimately though he’s only bought a little time.  Chalk began by reaffirming the government’s commitment to public protection. In a significant shift rapists will now spend their entire sentence in prison, as opposed to half of it or two-thirds. While this headline will probably prove popular, it does carry some risk: under this arrangement they will be released without any supervision from probation. There’s a chance they will be more likely to reoffend as a result, but that problem is many years away when someone else will be Justice Secretary.

It’s finally happened. Our prisons are almost full. Last night the Times reported that ‘Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales, has ordered that sentencing of convicted criminals who are currently on bail should be delayed from Monday’. Prisons in England and Wales are now unable to find cell space for every criminal that judges believe should be jailed. This means that next week people convicted of very serious crimes, including historic sex offences, may be found guilty then sent home on bail. Beyond the obvious public protection concerns this delay to justice will further traumatise victims, and reduce confidence in the whole system.           Anyone could have predicted this crisis.

Our prisons are overcrowded, dangerous and out of control. The prison population is rising faster than we can build new cells. Prisoners spend far too much time in their cells, developing mental health problems instead of skills. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Justice announced that it has the answer. Perhaps surprisingly they didn’t announce more new prisons, or a recruitment drive or to a new scheme to release non-violent prisoners earlier on home detention curfew or ‘tag’. In fact, the new policy is to send prisoners overseas. No, I didn’t have ‘bringing back Transportation’ on my Conference bingo card either. The press release states that the government will look to partner with other European countries in order to rent their prison space.

David Morgan, a 35 year-old man, told staff he’d taken an overdose. A nurse decided the man seemed drunk and needed to ‘sober up’. No proper medical assessment was conducted, and staff locked him in a holding cell. Over the next two and a half hours David became ‘increasingly distressed and unwell’, ‘incapable of coherent speech’ and ‘was unable to prevent himself from repeatedly falling on the floor’. Meanwhile the nurse, and prison staff looked on. As a result of these multiple falls, David broke his nose, fractured both legs and sustained significant bruising to his head and face. Eventually he lost consciousness, was taken to hospital and died eight days later.

In the aftermath of Daniel Khalife’s escape and recapture, prisons are in the headlines. Even the most commonplace events, like a prison stabbing, are being widely reported. So, too, is the revelation that 'prisoners are working in McDonald's': that was the gist of an article in the Daily Mail which revealed that a female prisoner was flipping burger and serving customers. But rather than condemn this initiative, we should praise McDonald's for taking on inmates and giving them another chance. The female McDonald's worker, who returned to Askham Grange in Yorkshire after her shift, is far from alone in being let out for the day: approximately 100,000 Releases on Temporary Licence (ROTLs) occur every three months. These releases mostly take place from Category D or ‘open’ prisons.