Prison bureaucracy is making inmates’ lives needlessly hard

Everyone knows that Britain’s jails are filthy, failing and dangerous. But there’s another less obvious problem with our prisons: those locked up can find it impossible to get anything done.

In prison, your ability to achieve the most basic of tasks done is almost entirely dependent on others. This means that if a prisoner needs to see a doctor, apply for a job, join a training or education program, or even get more loo roll, they need to contact someone who will solve the problem for them. When most prisoners are locked in their cells for 22 hours a day, this can prove very difficult.

In many prisons, every significant request for help requires the inmate to fill in a physical form which is posted in a box or handed to an officer. Some more advanced jails, like HMP Wandsworth where I was a prisoner in 2020, have ‘kiosks’ on the wing landings.