(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Crisis in UK prisons revealed by new investigation [1] [] Date: 2024-05 Lack of clothing is just one issue of poor hygiene and dignity. In 26 prisons, more than 20% of prisoners are unable to shower every day. In HMP Winchester, this figure rose to 93% of inmates. A quarter of England and Wales’ prisoners – more than 20,000 people – are held in now-crumbling Victorian facilities, some without access to any in-cell sanitation facilities. This has become a race issue: Black and minority ethnic men in HMP Coldingley were disproportionately housed in wings without in-cell toilets between July 2022 and August 2023, according to an inspection by the Independent Monitoring Board, which produces regular reports on prison conditions. The HMP Inspectorate issued an urgent notification to HMP Bristol in 2023, where men without in-cell toilets must call an officer to be escorted whenever they need to use the bathroom. Only 16% of prisoners in Bristol said cell bells were answered within five minutes, forcing them to use buckets and bins, which they empty out the window. The waste splashes into the cells below, causing an “overpowering” smell of urine, the inspector reported. In response, the government committed to install in-cell toilets by 2025. ‘Most shameful single aspect in society’ More than half of inmates in 35 English and Welsh prisons feel “unsafe”, according to openDemocracy’s analysis of surveys conducted by official inspectors. When looking at the number of prisons where a third of prisoners said the same, that number rises to 74. These safety fears are often linked to violence. More than a quarter of prisoners reported having experienced threats or intimidation from fellow prisoners, a further 13% said they had been physically attacked, and 3% said they had been sexually assaulted. Nearly one in ten also reported being physically assaulted by staff. The crisis in England and Wales’ prisons has been worsened by years of austerity cuts, with funding falling from £4.4bn when David Cameron became prime minister in 2010 to £3.6bn in 2015/16, his last year in office. Despite an increase in funding since then, spending levels are still lower than 14 years ago, with £4.1bn spent last year. At the same time, the prison population has ballooned to be the largest in Western Europe. Two-thirds of prisons are now overcrowded, meaning cells are holding a higher number of prisoners than they were designed for. “The provision of productive sentences in clean and decent conditions, with access to adequate healthcare and support, is simply not possible when the system is being made to cram eye-watering numbers of people well beyond its capacity,” said Andrew Neilson, the director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform. The systemic failings in British prisons has caused alarm internationally. In 2023, a German court refused a request to extradite a man accused of drug dealing to the UK, after his lawyer, Jan-Carl Janssen, successfully argued that conditions in English and Welsh prisons are so bad it would infringe his human rights. Janssen told openDemocracy that he understands that “in the UK – and in England and Wales in particular – prisoners are threatened with inhumane accommodation, a violation of Article 3 of the European Court of Human Rights”. Documents seen by openDemocracy reveal how the Ministry of Justice sent assurances to the German authorities that when overcrowding means prisons “fall short” of European rules on degrading and inhumane treatment, “alleviating factors are found”. Those factors, the department claimed, include how “prisoners are able to spend a considerable amount of time each day outside their cells.” But our investigation reveals that nearly three-quarters of prisoners shared cells designed for one and said they spent less than two hours outside of their cells during the week at HMP Wandsworth, which is likely where the man would have been held. At the weekend, the numbers spending less than two hours outside their cells rose to 91% of prisoners. The data is from autumn 2021 – two years before the extradition request. In 2023, at the time of the extradition request, HMP Wandsworth still had an overcrowding rate of 160%. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/prisons-most-shameful-single-issue-britain-analysis-inmate-surveys-inspector/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/