Displaying items by tag: prisons scandal

Khalife, a former soldier who was on remand at HMP Wandsworth, a category B prison rather than a high-security prison, escaped by clinging to the bottom of a delivery van. Professor Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and head of security at HMP Wandsworth, called it a ‘catastrophic system failure that actually starts with the allocation of Khalife to Wandsworth’. He said: “It’s pretty odd because what you would expect in terms of the allocation process is that somebody who was charged with terrorist offences under the Official Secrets Act, who’s an alleged fake bomb maker and is collecting information of use to terrorists, all of that package would lead you - I think reasonably - to conclude that this person is a flight risk, is an escape risk. The place that he should have ended up in, by all estimations, is Belmarsh prison. Wandsworth is filthy and infested with vermin; 44% of staff are off sick, and morale is awful.’