The prison service, police and security services must work together to tackle the threat from organised criminals, which is destabilising jails and preventing many from delivering essential rehabilitative work that will help people to stop offending, says the Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor in his annual report.
Charlie Taylor called it a threat that needs to be taken seriously at the highest levels of government. He said: “This has been another very difficult year for all those living and working in prisons in England and Wales. I cannot overstate my concern about the rapid and widespread ingress of illicit drugs, which is severely impacting the essential work of staff in reducing the risk of prisoners’ reoffending. Only when the prison service is able to keep drugs out of jails so that staff can focus on getting prisoners involved in genuinely purposeful activity, can we expect to see them play a meaningful role in rehabilitating, rather than simply warehousing, the men and women they hold.”
As for the supply and use of illicit drugs, undermining every aspect of prison life, far too little was being done to keep drugs out of jails, too many prisoners said it was easy to get hold of them, and the rate of positive random tests frequently reached more than 30 per cent, according to the report. In the six months before the Inspectorate returned to one category C prison – Hindley – more than half, 59pc of randomly selected prisoners had tested positive for illicit drug use. During an inspection of Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) ‘that found some of the worst standards inspectors had seen’, according to the report, detainees were openly smoking cannabis, while in Wandsworth, where ‘leaders struggled to enforce basic security procedures’, inspectors reported that the smell of cannabis was ‘ubiquitous’.
Drone delivery
Drones were making regular deliveries to Manchester and Long Lartin which held some of the most dangerous men in the country, including terrorists and organised crime bosses. Physical security such as netting, windows and CCTV was inadequate and at Manchester, inexperienced staff were being manipulated or simply ignored by prisoners. The failure to tackle these security issues seriously compromised safety and represented a threat to national security, the report said. The call is not new; in January 2025 the inspectorate called for urgent action to tackle the increasing problem of drones delivering drugs, mobile phones and weapons to two high security prisons inspected, Manchester and Long Lartin.
National rates of violence increased last year in prisons. In a foreword to his report, Charlie Taylor said that violence ‘adds to the anxiety of both staff and prisoners, destroys trust and makes the possibility of rehabilitation unlikely’. Inspectors found young offender institutions ‘plagued with often very serious violence at levels that were higher than in any adult prisons’. Charlie Taylor then said that the authorities had ceded the airspace to organised crime gangs, ‘to deliver contraband to jails holding extremely dangerous prisoners’.
You can view the 60-page report on the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website at www.hmiprisons.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Inverness Prison wall.
