Only one in five prisons has sufficient riot squad officers

Just 23 of 109 have minimum required by Operation Tornado

- ANDY GREGORY

Nearly four in five prisons do not have enough officers trained to deal with riots as part of so-called "Tornado" squads, despite rising violence and disorder behind bars, The Independent can reveal. With the prisons crisis a major concern ahead of the general election, prison officers responded to the revelations by accusing Rishi Sunak’s government of having “gambled with safety” – as former governors warned that the ability to respond to simultaneous riots at multiple jails could be “fatally compromised”.

The “scandalous” shortage of riot-trained officers – whose skills are vital in quickly controlling disorder inside a prison before it escalates – was first revealed just weeks ago by this publication, as the government admitted Tornado numbers had plummeted by nearly a third in just five years. Just 1,620 Tornado officers were in place across the prison estate as of February, down from 2,310 in 2018, prisons minister Edward Argar previously admitted in response to a parliamentary question by his Labour counterpart Ruth Cadbury.

While ministers claimed in March that there was “no minimum staffing requirement for Tornado teams”, further questions from Labour saw Mr Argar admit that the government “aims to have 2,100 volunteers trained in readiness for Operation Tornado” – as he revealed each prison’s recommended Tornado officer quota. Laying bare the scale of the crisis, analysis by The Independent of the newly released figures suggests that just 23 out of 109 prisons with a Tornado quota had enough riot-trained officers as of February.