The governor of Wandsworth Prison has resigned following an unscheduled inspection of the prison driven by local campaigners.
Katie Price has been in charge of the dilapidated Victorian prison opposite Wandsworth Common for two years, following a 35-year career in the prison service, but has been under pressure for months following the high-profile escape of prisoner and terrorism suspect Daniel Abed Khalife.
That escape shone a spotlight on the prison and it quickly emerged that conditions were far below what the public expected, including a large rat problem, mould, cells with sewage, understaffing, overcrowding, inadequate clothing, and a lack of medical attention for inmates.
The most recent report for the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Wandsworth, up to May last year, produced several stark warnings:
- The shortage of available staff seriously undermined the ability of the prison to function effectively.
- The prison was not safe.
- Conditions remained inhumane.
- The shortage of resources – human, financial and physical – made it very difficult to operate a fully effective security regime.
However it has been the creation of an outside group of local campaigners called the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign (WIC) that is thought to have brought about the recent change.
WIPC held a public meeting at the prison last month that was heavily attended by Putney locals, as well as national media, and heard from former prisoners and its former chaplain.
Putney.news has spoken to several people who attended the meeting who were shocked to hear about conditions and determined to do what they could about it, including writing to the Minister for Prisons asking for urgent action.
That local pressure is thought to have prompted the unscheduled inspection from Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). The Prison Governors Association has since claimed in a post on Twitter/X that governor Katie Price had already agreed to resign from her post before the inspection was carried out.
We confirm the Governor of Wandsworth has resigned from HMPPS a decision they made some time before the announced HMIP Inspection
— PGA (@PGA_Prisons) May 7, 2024
As a sign of loyalty to her team & Wandsworth she agreed to remain in post until the inspection concluded.
We will be making no further comments on X
It is far from the first time that Wandsworth Prison, which was built in 1851 and retains much of its outdated Victorian infrastructure, has been the centre of controversy over conditions.
Following Khalife’s escape in September 2023, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, said publicly that “in an ideal world” Wandsworth Prison would be shut but that there weren’t enough prisons and cells in the UK to handle the current prison population.
Wandsworth was designed to hold fewer than 1,000 prisoners but currently holds between 1,300 and 1,500. Safety concerns mean that all prisoners at the Category B prison – which is one step below maximum security – are effectively held in solitary confinement and only allowed out their cells for one or two hours a day, with a significant knock-in impact on their mental health and the prison’s general atmosphere.
Persistent problems with staff
Even though the most recent IMB report noted that “the management team at the prison worked very hard to deliver a regime despite very limited resources”, there have been persistent problems with how the prison has been run.
In 2009, gross misconduct charges were brought against the prisons’ managers for temporarily transferring prisoners to a different prison just before inspections in order to improve the result.
Then in 2011, after another inspection, Wandsworth was found to “compare badly” with similar prisons and its staff were again criticised for their “unwillingness… to acknowledge and take responsibility for the problems the prison faced.”
There were several subsequent investigations in the deaths of prisoners in their cells, thought to have been connected to poor conditions inside the jail, and a BBC investigation in 2016 found large scale drug abuse alongside allegations of corruption and claims that prisons staff were themselves bringing the drugs in.
The outcome of the recent inspection has yet to be published, but according to the WPIC, if the Chief Inspector decides to issue an “Urgent Notification”, a letter to the Secretary of State explaining why should be released in the next few days.
