Undercover In Britain's Prison Chaos I Times Investigates

An undercover journalist, from The Times, was hired at one of the country’s most dangerous jails and was then able to walk inside and interact with prisoners without security searches.

Read the story here: Concerts have better security than some jails, says top prison officer - https://www.thetimes.com/article/2440...

Paul Morgan-Bentley entered work at HMP Bedford amid a nationwide staffing shortage. On two out of eight days that he worked at the prison, there was no one manning the security scanners at the front entrance when he arrived for work. This allowed him and several others to walk inside the jail and through to prisoner wings without even the most basic searches.

Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, said jail staff across the UK wanted to crack down on prisoners getting hold of illicit items but that the UK’s prison bosses were “not up for the fight”. He said jails were routinely failing to stop drones making deliveries to prisoners at night and that staff were terrified that guns would soon start entering jails this way. “I’ve never seen it so bad. I’ve never seen it so overcrowded and I’ve never seen it so violent,” he said. “If we had to lock down a wing or an area day after day after day to get rid of mobile phones, weapons and drugs, the staff on the frontline are up for that. At the moment there’s a lot of people getting appeased because the people in charge of our prisons are not up for the fight.”

Fairhurst’s comments were made during an interview on Britain’s prison crisis for a new Times Investigates video series.

They come after a Times reporter went undercover last year as an agency worker at HMP Bedford, one of the country’s most dangerous jails.