Charlie Taylor has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Just as the drama of the escape and recapture of Daniel Khalife settled down, HMP Wandsworth returned to more routine problems. On Sunday, another prisoner was hospitalised, having been stabbed by a fellow inmate.
Quality of staff is critical. The best officers have an intuitive sense that something is going on
This sort of violence is all too common, especially in the overcrowded Victorian local prisons that hold often volatile remand prisoners. In the past year there have been 1,878 serious assaults on prisoners, an increase of 32 per cent on the previous 12 months. The cause is usually a score being settled between gangs or the failure to pay a debt.
There is big money to be made getting drugs and mobile phones into prisons – and since Covid restrictions were finally lifted, the availability of drugs has shot back up.
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