Why Britain’s prisons will only get more violent

Prison and probation staffing is approaching dangerously low levels’ said the Ministry of Justice in a document they published by mistake this week. It’s hardly surprising to those of us who know about our failing prison system. In June, the Justice Select Committee published the results of a detailed survey of prison staff showing that half of frontline staff don’t feel safe at work.

Frontline staff are ‘band 3-5’; the officers, senior officers and custodial managers who spend their days working with prisoners. Their responses make grim reading. Over 80 per cent said morale was poor in their prison. More than 60 per cent of those officers said their mental health wasn’t taken seriously at work. Prisons are traumatising and frightening places, where a handful of officers can often be in charge of hundreds of prisoners, relying on the inmates’ consent to maintain order. Mental health absences among prison officers have doubled in the past five years, and 14.6