UPDATED A man awaiting trial at HMP Wandsworth is reported to have stopped eating, and no one close to him has heard from him since Monday.
Ian Roberts, 51, is said to have begun refusing food on Friday 25 September, after being placed in segregation. He sent a recorded message on Monday saying he was refusing food and drink in protest. Neither the prison nor the Prison Service has confirmed the details.
It is not clear whether he is refusing water as well as food. Medical guidance on hunger strikes says people who stop drinking deteriorate very rapidly, while those who keep drinking can usually last several weeks.
The Canary news site, which reported the protest on 29 September, calls it a thirst and hunger strike. It says this is the sixth time Mr Roberts has been segregated, this time for 21 days, and that the prison has refused to tell his next of kin whether he is medically stable.
The site says he was classed as a high risk prisoner when he arrived, lost that status as the prison became more overcrowded, and was made to share a cell against health advice. It says the governor accepted in a meeting with him that the status should never have been removed.
On the prison’s reform wing, which opened last November, self-harm is down 57 per cent and assaults down 45 per cent compared with the rest of the prison.
Member of direct action group
Mr Roberts was remanded in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in April, with two other people, after a break-in at the Fleet premises of electronics firm Keysight Technologies in Hampshire. All three are charged with aggravated burglary and criminal damage, and Mr Roberts is also charged with assaulting an emergency worker. Their trial is due in July 2027. The law restricts what can be reported from a hearing of this kind before the trial.
The Canary describes Mr Roberts as a member of People Against Genocide, a group that says it takes direct action to stop the UK-Israel weapons trade. In August the group claimed responsibility for attacks on two other firms’ premises, in Aberdeenshire and Doncaster. A protest was organised outside HMP Wandsworth on Sunday.
Anyone worried about the safety or wellbeing of someone in prison can contact the prison’s duty governor, orderly officer or safer custody team. Concerns can also be raised with the Independent Monitoring Board, the volunteer body that checks how prisoners are treated, at imb@justice.gov.uk.
We asked the Prison Service two days ago whether Mr Roberts is refusing food and drink, what medical checks are in place, why his next of kin has not been told whether he is medically stable, and whether the governor accepted that his risk status should not have been removed. It has not yet answered, and we will update this story when it does.
Overcrowding, which the Canary says cost Mr Roberts his high risk status, is also the Government’s reason for letting prisoners out early. Prisoners from Wandsworth were among about 700 expected to be freed across the country when the scheme began on Thursday.
Thousands more are due out in nine further phases running to June 2027. Ministers narrowed the scheme by excluding rapists, the most serious child sex offenders and people convicted of manslaughter.
A prisoner freed early from Wandsworth told the BBC the prison was so crowded “even the rats are complaining”. The prison population of England and Wales stood at 87,499 on Monday, up 1,738 in three months, according to Ministry of Justice figures.
Justice Secretary Alex Norris said the greatest danger to victims would be “prisons running out of cells for dangerous criminals”. Reform UK’s candidate for mayor of London, Laila Cunningham, said outside Wandsworth Prison that she would “hang my head in shame” if she were in Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s place.
Update, 10am: Ian Roberts has ended his hunger strike and is eating and drinking again, according to the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign (WPIC), who visited him yesterday, Thursday 1 October. He has had several visitors this week and appears to be in good physical health. The Prison Service has still not answered our questions.
