Prison Wandsworth, London, is just one of the many jails in England and Wales that date back to Victorian times. Photo: dpa/Zuma Press
If you are unlucky enough to spend time in a British prison, the deaths, the vermin and the rotting walls might make you think time has stood still for a century.
The conditions recall those described by Charles Dickens, who lived from 1812-1870 and was deeply affected by the jail where his father was held.
Many of Britain’s prisons date back to the Victorian era and are still plagued by similar problems, such as rats, disease and neglect.
There is little evidence of resocialisation in the chronically underfunded system.
Prisons attract little wider interest, aside from a recent flurry of attention after former German tennis star Boris Becker was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for illicitly transferring large sums of money and hiding assets after he was declared bankrupt.
The three-time Wimbledon winner spent the first weeks of his sentence in the 1851 prison in Wandsworth – one of London’s most notorious jails.
Becker’s lawyer denied rumours that the tennis star complained about the food or pressed an emergency button while at Wandsworth.
But who could blame him? Human rights groups have long criticised conditions in British prisons, as has the government watchdog.
“The more you understand, the more outraged you will be,” director of the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) Peter Dawson said in an interview last year.
Too many people are held in too little space, with not enough staff that has too little experience.
Violence and drugs are just some of the problems in Her Majesty’s prisons. Mutinies are commonplace. The number of people who die behind bars is at its highest level since records began. Large numbers of prisoners are mentally ill.
There are 118 jails in England and Wales, with capacity for about 77,700 prisoners, according to the World Prison Brief platform.
However, nearly 80,000 people are being held, a level of 132 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants – by far the highest rate in Western Europe.
Germany, for example, has 179 prisons with capacity for 72,400 inmates, with 59,000 people incarcerated. The prison population per 100,000 inhabitants is 71.
The situation in Britain is expected to deteriorate, with jails likely to be holding almost 100,000 people by 2026 in England and Wales alone, according to forecasts.
The increase is due to tougher sentences for almost all offences, the PRT says.
According to the charity, more people are handed life sentences in England and Wales than in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Sweden combined.
Not that the public are aware of that. Three-quarters of people in England and Wales said sentences had become more lenient, in a 2021 survey.
People are being sentenced to prison for minor, non-violent offences, while the number of sentences involving community service has fallen by half over the past decade.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conservative government recently enacted a law to further lengthen prison sentences for serious crimes.
Alongside overcrowding, the mere age of many buildings is also a problem, with 32 English and Welsh prisons still in operation from the Victorian era (1837-1901). They house 22,000 prisoners.
Meanwhile Dartmoor Prison, built in 1806 for prisoners of war from the Napoleonic Wars, is also still in use.
Its old walls are often infested with vermin, according to HM Inspectorate of Prisons reports.
A former prisoner sued the prison service for causing him post-traumatic stress disorder due to rats in his cell in 2019. They entered his cell through a broken window, ran up and down the walls and across his bed, according to the Guardian newspaper.
Sanitary facilities are also often out of order, with one prisoner telling inspectors he had not been able to shower for seven months.
Staff shortages exacerbate the situation, arising due to the government’s austerity policies, poor pay and the harsh conditions of the job, says the Institute for Government think tank.
The number of prison staff was cut by more than a quarter in England and Wales between 2010 and 2017. Staff turnover is soaring.
Some prisons are also run by private service providers, but the contracts often have to be terminated because of disastrous conditions.
The lack of staff means many prisoners spend up to 23 hours a day in their cells, as they cannot be adequately supervised.
Some prefer not to go out, fearing violence from other prisoners.
“He was frightened he was going to get killed,” the wife of a prisoner in Birmingham told the BBC in 2018, describing the prison there as a “hell hole”.
Former tennis star Becker has since been transferred to Huntercombe prison in Nuffield, west of London, where conditions are said to be comparatively good.
He is not likely to emerge unscathed by the state of the nation’s prisons, however. – dpa/Christoph Meyer
