Yes, HMP Wandsworth is dangerous – most prisons in England and Wales are
Ministers told to improve state of London prison – but our investigation shows its appalling conditions are the norm
The government has been issued with an “urgent notification” for the improvement of Wandsworth Prison, after an unannounced inspection revealed inmates are being held in “very poor” conditions amid severe overcrowding and staff shortages.
The chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, put HMP Wandsworth in special measures last week after finding a “shocking decline” caused by “poor leadership” and “systemic and cultural failures”.
Seven men being held at the prison in south-west London died from self-inflicted wounds in the past year, while another escaped in a high-profile incident that led to a three-day nationwide police search.
But the failings at Wandsworth are just the tip of the iceberg – with an openDemocracy investigation published earlier this month revealing the entire English and Welsh prison system is in crisis.
Inspectors found Wandsworth to be severely overcrowded, housing 1,513 prisoners – almost 600 people more than it was built to safely hold. Eighty percent of inmates were having to share a cell designed for one person.
We found that prisons’ maximum capacities are often ignored in the English and Welsh prison estate, which holds 87,000 people, including many who are crammed into too-small and crumbling Victorian facilities.
Such overcrowding can have dire impacts on health and safety, so it is unsurprising that the chief inspector’s urgent notification revealed 69% of those held in Wandsworth reported feeling “unsafe”. This is a 21% increase from two years earlier, according to openDemocracy’s investigation.
That lack of safety is heightened by a failure by prison staff to answer inmates’ emergency ‘cell bells’ in a timely manner. Prisoners in Wandsworth reported that 40% of bell calls were not answered within the five-minute target set by the Inspectorate of Prisons.
openDemocracy’s analysis of prison data from 2021 to 2024 found there were only eight prisons out of 117 where more than 60% of inmates said their bell was responded to within five minutes. Failure to answer cell bells in time can have fatal consequences, as the bells are used to alert staff to self-harm, ill health and violence between prisoners.
Stephen Hotson, who was jailed for killing his wife, died in prison in 2021 after waiting 18 minutes for a response to his cell bell, which was then only answered accidentally when a prison officer happened to walk by, according to an inquest. According to our investigation, only 21% of prisoners in HMP Dovegate, where Hotson was held, said their cell bell was answered within five minutes.
For prisoners held in cells without in-cell sanitation, delays in answering cell bells can mean long waits to use the toilet, forcing many to use bins instead. This is particularly humiliating and unhygienic given many prisoners are being made to share too-small cells designed for one person.
Sian Norris
But poor hygiene is a common concern across the prison estate. Our investigation revealed how thousands of prisoners are living in dirty, dilapidated conditions – with many unable even to have a daily shower. Those who can wash are often forced to do so in freezing, dirty cubicles.
Wandsworth is no exception, our analysis of the 2022 prisoner survey found that only 41% of inmates could shower every day – despite the Prison Inspectorate that year recommending that all prisoners held in the prison “should be able to have a shower every day in clean and well maintained facilities with adequate privacy”.
Little has changed since that recommendation was made. The chief inspector’s recent urgent notification on Wandsworth expresses concern that “the fabric of the buildings and facilities including showers and heating still needed significant investment to bring them up to a decent standard.”
Prisons are unhygienic in other ways, too. Our investigation found that in 31 prisons, more than a third of inmates described their cell on the first night as “very dirty”.
“I had several cells during my stay in prison and they were all pretty filthy to start with, although the first night cell was probably the worst,” Maria Leitner, who was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in HMP Styal in 2018, told openDemocracy. “The last cell I stayed in had bloodstains on the carpet.”
Urgent reforms needed
Half of the staff across the English and Welsh prison estate started in the past five years, with fewer than 20% having been in their jobs for between 10 and 19 years.
This lack of institutional knowledge in prisons has an impact on relationships between staff and prisoners, with only 41% of prisoners in Wandsworth in 2024 saying staff “treated them with respect”. Although this was unusually low, we found that in 61 prisons, fewer than three quarters of inmates said they were treated with respect by staff.
High levels of drug use are also an issue for Wandsworth, with just over half (51%) of inmates saying it is “easy” to access illicit drugs, according to the urgent notification issued this month. This is double the total from the previous survey in 2022, when 26% of prisoners said it was either “very easy” or “quite easy” to get drugs.
Such issues are not confined to Wandsworth. Survey data analysed by openDemocracy found that in 40 prisons, more than a third of inmates said it was easy to access illicit drugs.
As well as its links to organised crime and debt, prisoners are dying as a result of illicit drug use. In HMP Bridgend, there have been seven deaths linked to drug use in 2024 alone, of which four have been linked to the ‘zombie’ synthetic cannabinoid drug known as spice.
While the chief inspector’s demands that the government improves conditions at Wandsworth may offer some hope for the prison, our analysis demonstrates that the conditions in the south London jail are far from unique.
Multiple prisons across England and Wales are failing to provide safe, respectful, clean and healthy places for those who have committed crimes to rehabilitate – affecting all of us by making society a less safe place.
“While urgent reforms are needed at Wandsworth, the government needs to be honest with the public that treating men inhumanely, not investing in rehabilitation and then releasing most of them into homelessness, does nothing to stop crime,” said Andrea Coomber KC (Hon.), Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform.
“It only harms the people who live and work in prisons and, as reoffending rates show, ultimately does not keep us safe.”
The Ministry of Justice previously told openDemocracy that it is "improving safety and have invested £100m into tough security measures to clamp down on the contraband that fuels violence behind bars.”
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