\n<\/p>\n
The fortress-like entrance of HMP Wandsworth, one of the UK\u2019s most notorious jails, has become a familiar sight in recent years.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Daniel Khalife, a spy for Iran, escaped through the gates by strapping himself to the underside of a delivery truck, prompting a nationwide hunt. Two years ago, prisoners celebrated their freedom under an emergency release scheme in front of these gates, thanking Keir Starmer and swigging champagne from bottles.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Wandsworth prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu was jailed after being filmed in a cell having sex with an inmate. And in November, a sex offender and a fraudster were accidentally released from the jail because of clerical errors.<\/p>\n
It helps explain why it was in this part of south-west London that, in 35C heat on Thursday, David Lammy, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, and Amber Rudd, a former Conservative home secretary, began a search for long-term solutions for the Prison Service.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Lammy and Rudd visit HMP Wandsworth to launch the start of a six-month review into the Prison Service.<\/span> Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Rudd\u2019s task as the newly appointed independent reviewer of the prison system is to take just six months to draw up policies which will address the underlying problems leading to such scandals.<\/p>\n She wants to provide \u201cguard rails\u201d for improvements that will tighten security, improve public safety and tackle drugs and gangs. \u201cI think that various governments have turned a blind eye to issues to do with prisons and then they suddenly do something when something goes badly wrong,\u201d Rudd said. \u201cThere hasn\u2019t been an attempt to say \u2018what are we going to do medium to long term?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n About a quarter of jailed offenders across England and Wales are held in Victorian prisons such as Wandsworth. Its latest inspection report said there were 1,430 prisoners in cells meant for 894. Conditions have improved since a \u201ccatastrophic\u201d inspection by the prisons\u2019 watchdog in 2024 led to a pledge of an extra \u00a3100m and a cut in the number of prisoners.<\/p>\n Despite evidence from other prisons that self-harm incidents rise during a heatwave, Wandsworth\u2019s prisoners are often stuck in their cells, some for 22 hours a day, with no fans or air conditioning.<\/p>\n Inmates are allowed to buy a handheld fan through an electronic kiosk on each landing, staff said. Prisoners are granted about 50p a day if they do not have a prison job, and prison sources said the fans cost \u00a315.<\/p>\n Hot weather brings other problems, too: Andy Davy, Wandsworth\u2019s \u201cgoverning governor\u201d, is often taken up with stopping drones from bringing in drugs. \u201cIf the weather is good we get absolutely peppered, usually between two and four in the morning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A drone\u2019s controller can be several miles away, and uses a camera mounted on the aerial vehicle to direct packages to a particular cell.<\/p>\n <\/span>Rudd says she is not being an expert in prisons but hopes to harness the \u2018expertise from the people who have it\u2019.<\/span> Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n In an office heavy with the scent of skunk strain cannabis, Lammy and Rudd examined five intercepted drone packages, two of which were 70cm long.<\/p>\n One transparent package had smaller packages inside, each bearing an initial of prisoners who had placed an order for illicit goods. Another package was covered in fish hooks, making it easier to be pulled in through a cell window with a fishing line or a hook.<\/p>\n A prison officer slashed open a third package that had been intercepted in the spring. Large buds of skunk and rolling tobacco, worth thousands of pounds in prison, spilled on to the table.<\/p>\n Wrapped in cellophane among the tobacco was a set of mobile phone chargers and sim cards. Other drone-dropped packets have included Allen keys to help dismantle windows so that even larger packages can be dragged into cells.<\/p>\n HMP Wandsworth has had a drop this year in the number of drone incursions from highs of 131 in 2025, a senior staff member said. One manager attributed the success to a new policy of \u201cring-fencing\u201d an extra officer to remain outside on clear nights, disrupting attempted dropoffs by shining a strong light into the drone\u2019s camera.<\/p>\n But he claimed prisoners connected to gangs had been calling for emergency help during dropoffs \u2013 sometimes faking self-harm incidents or overdoses \u2013 knowing this would force drone-disrupting staff to leave their posts to attend the landing.<\/p>\n <\/span>Rudd and Lammy speak to prison governor Andy Davy.<\/span> Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Rudd, who stood down from Boris Johnson\u2019s cabinet in 2019 after clashing over Brexit, said she would also address prisoners\u2019 addictions, an issue that has cast a shadow over her own family.<\/p>\n Her former husband, the late writer AA Gill, was famously frank about his life as an alcoholic. Their son, Alasdair Gill, a chef, has also written a memoir in which he revealed his own problems with ketamine and cocaine.<\/p>\n \u201cAddictions are certainly not the only problem,\u201d Rudd said. \u201cBut helping to address addictions and get free of them will keep the public safe. I\u2019ve seen a lot of it in my family. It is a great blight on many families.\u201d<\/p>\n Rudd said she was not an expert on prisons and was surprised to be offered the job. The hope is that proposals from a former Conservative cabinet minister could gain cross-party support.<\/p>\n \u201cI got a call from David Lammy six weeks ago, out of the blue, and [he] sent me a message. I had to check with [fellow ex-Tory minister] David Gauke that this was [Lammy\u2019s] number and I wasn\u2019t being spoofed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The review will also look at \u201csafety and decency\u201d, but appears to have placed its own guard rails on any demands for extra funding. It says that \u201call costs within this spending review must be absorbed within [Ministry of Justice]\u2019s budget\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMy challenge is to extract the expertise from the people who have it,\u201d Rudd said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to become an expert in six months. So I hope what I\u2019ll be able to do is not skim the surface, but do some really deep thinking and analysis and get to the right outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The fortress-like entrance of HMP Wandsworth, one of the UK\u2019s most notorious jails, has become a familiar sight in recent years. In 2023, Daniel Khalife, a spy for Iran, escaped through the gates by strapping himself to the underside of a delivery truck, prompting a nationwide hunt. Two years ago, prisoners celebrated their freedom under<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[308,994,187,999,4017,542,104,8550,2413,2414,24978,2018],"class_list":{"0":"post-51079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-amber","9":"tag-answers","10":"tag-crisis","11":"tag-david","12":"tag-drones","13":"tag-drugs","14":"tag-heat","15":"tag-lammy","16":"tag-prisons","17":"tag-probation","18":"tag-rudd","19":"tag-search"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}