HMP Wandsworth: Inmates going weeks without time outdoors in rat-infested prison, report finds

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. And Mr Taylor warned “the prison, education staff and, in particular, Home Office staff, were not doing enough to support” foreign inmates, who comprised around 45 per cent of the prison’s population. Noting that these prisoners should have been held instead in immigration removal centres or in the community, the report warned of a “growing backlog” of prisoners seeking asylum who were still waiting for their cases to be assessed, adding: “Detainees spent far too long in the prison with their cases unresolved.” While local charity, BEST, had remained on-site during the coronavirus pandemic, doing “invaluable work in supporting foreign national prisoners” Home Office staff had “inexplicably” absented themselves from the prison for more than a year, the report said. Even since Home Office staff had returned, working what appeared to be limited hours, they were not running surgeries on the wing and prisoners were lucky if they got a phone call.” Inspectors said essential resettlement and sentence progression work was unable to take place because prison offender managers were deployed on the wings to backfill staff absences. The prison’s education block had sat unused since March 2020, inspectors found, adding that “most of the very limited” education provision for the “desperately bored” population at Wandsworth came in the form of work packs.