source: OpenDemocracy

published: 6 May 2024

Image Credit: Unsplash at www.FreeRangeStock.com

When Dr Maria Leitner arrived at HMP Styal to serve a four-and-a-half-year sentence in 2018, she was handed a Hello Kitty T-shirt, a pair of leggings and a “pretty rough pair of trainers”, which she would go on to wear every day for the next 18 months. “By the time winter came, they were full of holes,” the 56-year-old told openDemocracy. “My feet were regularly wet.”

FLeitner’s experience was not unusual. A charity worker told this website of seeing women in prison wearing “flip flops in the snow”, while the official prison inspectorate reported in November 2023 that “many women” in HMP Peterborough could not go outside to exercise “because they did not have a coat, jumper or appropriate footwear.”

The ill-fitting clothing given to inmates is just one of several stark revelations uncovered by openDemocracy’s investigation into the state of England and Wales’ 117 prisons, which house some 87,000 people.

Our analysis of prisoner survey data and reports by the inspectorate reveals widespread and systemic failings in safety, hygiene, healthcare, violence and release planning. We found:

• More than half of inmates feel “unsafe” in 35 prisons
• Nearly one in ten prisoners reported being physically assaulted by staff members
• A quarter of inmates reported threats or intimidation from fellow prisoners, with a further 13% reporting physical attacks
• A quarter of prisoners are held in Victorian facilities, where many do not have access to any in-cell sanitation and are forced to use bins as makeshift toilets
• 7% of prisoners said their time in prison made them more likely to offend
• In 26 prisons, fewer than 80% of prisoners are able to shower every day

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