PRISONS are at their worst in over 10 years, the chief inspector said yesterday, as charities blamed Tory cuts for the staggering rise in violence and self-harm.

Nick Hardwick’s damning report revealed that inmate safety has plummeted and that hygiene has deteriorated to a point where staff at a London jail said: “I wouldn’t keep a dog in there.”

And Mr Hardwick told Justice Secretary Michael Gove that changes needed to come fast as staff cuts and overcrowding had turned prisons into “places of violence, squalor and idleness.”

Penal reform charity Howard League director of campaigns Andrew Neilson told the Star that the report was a “sobering verdict” on the situation.

“It is a simple fact that you cannot allow demand on the prisons to increase whilst reducing their resources and expect conditions to hold up,” he said.

“There are many people currently languishing in prison who need not be there.”