The government’s troubled flagship “super-prison” has now seen its third leadership change in just two years after its governor was sent to take over at another struggling jail – in a situation likened to rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
Repeated leadership changes have caused disruption since HMP Five Wells in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, opened in March 2022, inspectors warned in April, with nearly two-thirds of staff having left already, and drug use reported to be rampant.
The jail’s new governor, Will Styles, has been praised for bringing some stability to the prison. But Mr Styles has now been sent to take over at a different G4S jail instead, HMP Parc, where 10 prisoners have died in the space of three months resulting in protests and disorder.
“Staff need leadership, not Titanic deckchairs,” said Professor John Podmore, a former governor of Belmarsh, Brixton and Swaleside.
The creation of six new super-prisons is central to Tory and Labour plans to fix the crisis engulfing Britain’s prison system by creating 20,000 new prison places. But Professor Podmore said the difficulties evidenced at Five Wells show that the “policy of building their way out of a crisis is failing and doomed to failure”.
The first inspection at Five Wells, carried out in December, alarmingly highlighted that just 272 of the nearly 750 staff hired since the prison opened less than two years prior still remained in post – leaving it dependent on officers loaned from other jails.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 17, 2024 من The Independent.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 17, 2024 من The Independent.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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