Yahoo News Prisoners at 'squalid' HMP Wandsworth 'locked in cell for 23 hours a day with rats and sewage'
Prisoners at a South London prison are locked up for 22 hours a day with vermin and sewage, a former chaplain at the prison has claimed. Liz Bridge, who worked at HMP Wandsworth for seven years, said the best word to describe the prison was "squalid".
Liz was the prison's chaplain, and would speak to prisoners every day, visiting them in their cells and providing comfort, support and a listening ear. However, she was dismissed from her position after an investigation after the escape of suspected terrorist Daniel Khalife discovered she had anonymously donated around £15 each to several prisoners who were about to leave.
Liz told MyLondon: "I had given five or six men very small amounts of money, less than £25 when they were about to go out, or were seriously self-harming and they were destitute, and very anxious about the fact they had no money. And the prison said that made me a risk to the prison."
Liz also runs a charity that sends necessities like jigsaw puzzles and craft kits into the prison, but this has also been stopped since the investigation. She is now leading a campaign to improve conditions in the prison, after her experiences there over the last few years.
"What I want to do is make sure that the prison becomes decent, becomes a safe place to hold people," she said. HMP Wandsworth is a men's remand prison, where people who have been charged with a crime but are awaiting trial but deemed unsafe to be granted bail are held.
Locked inside a cell for up to 23 hours a day
"A prison cell in Wandsworth is the size of most people's small bathroom," Liz said. It contains a bunk bed, sink, toilet, and opposite the bunk bed a counter and one chair. This is where two men live for up to 23 hours a day.
There is no communal eating - all prisoners eat meals in their cells. Liz said: "So one of you sits on the chair and one of you sits on the bottom bunk, which means your crouched. The other thing you can do is one of you can eat your meal on the chair and the other can sit on the lavatory".
"But it's so small that in the 23 hours or 22 hours you're locked up in it, you can't both do exercise at the same time," Liz pointed out. There are also serious problems with vermin in the prison, Liz claimed, as prisoners will throw their empty food containers or cans out of the window to avoid the smell settling in the damp and airless cells.
"We have dreadful rat and mouse problems," Liz said. "But you have to understand why people are doing it." Men will also flush unwanted food down their toilets to avoid the smells, putting further pressure on an overworked and antiquated plumbing system. Sewage would flow back up through the showers and come up through the shower drains, Liz said.
And when the men are allowed out of their cells, they often have just an hour - and that means they have to choose between having a shower or picking a new book to read. Boredom is a huge problem in the prison, as the prisoners are all locked up in almost solitary confinement for so long each day.
'If you wanted to foster mental illness, you could use Wandsworth Prison'
The impact of these conditions has a severe effect on prisoners' mental health, Liz believes. "We have some people come to prison who are seriously mentally ill. And we have a lot of people who are borderline mentally ill or very unhappy or very depressed or very confused," Liz said.
"If you're then locked up for 22 hours with a stranger and with a not very good plumbing system, your mental health isn't going to improve." Liz added: "If you wanted to foster mental illness, you could use Wandsworth Prison."
But there is also a knock-on effect on keeping prison staff. "We have sometimes less than 50 percent of the people we should have coming in on a shift", Liz claimed. "They're just not turning up for work."
Boredom is also dangerous fuel for men who have been locked up for such a long time each day. "The men are violent," Liz said. "You don't come out of a cell after 22 hours quietly moving along, they come out like fighting temeraires." She added: "It isn't a nice place to work when your 'customers' are constantly rude to you."
This is why the items Liz's charity was sending into the prison, including jigsaws, wind-up radios and other crafts, have been stopped, she thinks. Liz said: "The thing we were sending in that was really important were wind-up radios."
Radios cost £18 to buy in the prison, which many people who were too ill or mental unwell to work had no ability to make. Also popular were jigsaws ands even little assembly toy kits, which prisoners could put together and paint.
"We can't take them in. I don't know why. There's no staff to scan things, these are things which need a lot of security scanning and then handing out. And there just isn't the staff to do it."
The Ministry of Justice deny that the charity, Wandsworth Prison Welfare Trust, has been blocked by the prison service, and say that when Liz stopped working at the prison the link to the charity ceased.
'I want decency and dignity'
And now, Liz has spearheaded the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign to make things better at the prison. "What I want is decency," Liz said. "I want to know that the vermin are firmly under control.
"That there is a plentiful supply of clean clothes and bedding - that people aren't going fix, six weeks without a change of kit." Liz also wants to see prisoners allowed out of their cells for longer than one to two hours a day, which would give them time to properly clean their cells.
"I would like somebody to reassure me that the plumbing system and the hot water system always work. I'm not asking for luxury, I just want things to work."
Liz added: "I want decency and dignity in there so that people can pass their time until they're in court, but I want them to be able to read, I want them to be able to do jigsaws. I want them to be able to talk to each other. And always, everybody who wants to, to be able to have a shower every day."
A Prison Service spokesperson said: “We’re improving safety and conditions at HMP Wandsworth by boosting staffing levels and investing millions into upgrades such as new CCTV and windows, roof repairs and refurbished healthcare facilities. Staff at Wandsworth have also been given additional training in suicide and self-harm prevention, and we are working with the Samaritans to provide further support to prisoners who need it.”
The Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign will hold its first public meeting at St Anne's Church in Wandsworth on Wednesday, April 10 at 7pm. For more information, follow the campaign's posts on X here.
Got a story for us? Email anna.willis@reachplc.com.
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