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THE government’s “love affair with imprisonment” has been condemned after a high-security prison was found to be in a crisis of understaffing.
The Prisons Inspectorate is calling for immediate action after finding exhausted prison officers during a visit of HMP Swaleside, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.
Inspectors reported staff shortages “affecting all aspects of the prison’s regime.”
Five suicides were reported and unacceptable levels of violence were found.
Prison Reform Trust director Peter Dawson said: “This report describes a fundamental strategic failure to provide the number of staff a prison needs to be safe.
“That failure has made it impossible for management and staff locally to do almost every aspect of their job.
“The only way to make the prison safe is for it to hold a fraction of its current population.
“This is the inevitable result of the government’s love affair with imprisonment: it is time it faced up to the consequences of that pointless obsession.”
