Rishi Sunak’s government has revealed that 80 prison officers failed to show up for work at HMP Wandsworth on the day terror suspect Daniel Abed Khalife allegedly escaped from the jail.
Nearly four in 10 of the prison’s staff skipped shifts, a Tory minister admitted – but the government continued to insist that staff shortages were not a factor in the apparent security breach.
Experts said stress “burnout”, low pay and a rise in violence and attacks on staff had led to a mental health crisis among officers. Labour said the “astonishing” rate of absences at Wandsworth showed that staffing problems were “making the public less safe”.
It comes after Khalife was charged with fleeing Wandsworth on 6 September by strapping himself to the underside of a food lorry. The 21-year-old was arrested on a west London canal after being pulled off a bike by a counter-terrorism officer.
Responding to a Labour question about staffing levels on the day of the alleged escape, prisons minister Damian Hinds said only 61 per cent of Wandsworth’s officers had attended work as expected.
But the minister said: “All staff in both the kitchen and the gatehouse were on duty on 6 September. An initial investigation into Daniel Khalife’s escape did not find the staffing level to be a contributing factor.”
The Sunak government has been reluctant to accept staff shortages or absences could be to blame. But Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, said there are “too many prisoners in Wandsworth for the amount of staff”.
His 2021 report found 30 per cent of Wandsworth officers were either off sick or failed to turn up. Writing for The Independent, Mr Taylor said the jail had become “one of the most squalid, overcrowded prisons in the estate” – arguing “the single biggest problem that faces Wandsworth is a lack of staff”.
Khalife charged with escaping HMP Wandsworth
Mr Taylor said many officers across England stuggled with stress and other mental health issues, with some off work because of assaults by inmates. The inspector said increased prison violence created a “vicious cycle” where staff stayed at home – causing violence to increase.
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The chief inspector said staff shortages are an ongoing issue in many prisons, including Birmingham, Swaleside, Stocken, Elmley and others. The most recent report on HMP Mount in Hertfordshire also found a 40 per cent shortfall in staff availability.
While the inspector’s 2021 report found staff absences at Wandsworth at 30 per cent, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) found in 2022 that the problem was so acute that absences reached 40 per cent on some days.
The IMB report found “incidents of violence at alarming levels” at Wandsworth – but found it “unsurprising” given the “depleted staff numbers, degrading living conditions and high levels of mental health need”.
Andrea Albert, president of the Prison Governors’ Association, admitted there was a “recruitment and retention problem” due to a rise in violence, stress, low pay and “poor” development opportunities.
“We do have, across some of our prisons, we do have high levels of staff sickness, we do have wellbeing issues. It is a very stressful environment,” she told BBC Radio 4’s World at One. “I would probably say that in some of our prisons it does border on being quite dangerous.”
“There are prisons that are running with similar staffing levels to Wandsworth, so they’re running with maybe 30 per cent to 40 per cent reduction in staff on a daily basis,” said Ms Albert. But the governors’ chief said some prisons were over-recruiting, so staff can be sent to “places like Wandsworth” to bolster numbers.
Vehicle searched by police during their hunt for Daniel Khalife
Mr Hinds insisted that staffing levels at Wandsworth on the day of the security breach “were above the minimum staffing level required”. While 125 prison officers attended their shift, 80 officers did not.
Labour’s Rosena Allin-Khan, MP for Wandsworth, who asked the question about staffing on the day of the alleged escape, said it “beggars belief” that almost 40 per cent of staff failing to turn up was acceptable.
Ms Allin-Khan told The Independent: “When I visited Wandsworth prison a few months ago, the biggest issue they were facing were staff shortages … just six officers turned up for a shift one night in December. The government chose to ignore my concerns.”
She added: “It beggars belief that the government is claiming that 61 per cent of prison officers attending a shift is acceptable. Their complacency is astounding and illustrates how unfit they are to run the country. Our communities are being failed.”
Daniel Khalife at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday
Labour’s Shabana Mahmood, shadow justice secretary, said the “astonishing” fact that almost 40 per cent of staff did not turn up “makes it clear that the dire conditions at the prison are having wide-ranging implications”.
She added: “13 years of Conservative mismanagement has led to staff shortages and unmanageable workloads in the prison and probation service, making the public less safe. Morale amongst staff is in the depths of despair, and the rate of loss of experienced staff is frankly alarming.”
Mr Sunak told broadcasters it would be “premature” to talk about the “specific incidents” until an independent investigation establishes the facts. The PM would not be drawn on whether the level of absenteeism was acceptable but urged “people to turn up (to work) wherever they work”.
Experts have warned that the staffing crisis and lack of experienced officers was leaving jails vulnerable to increased violence and control by gangs.
Analysis by The Independent published this week shows that some 60 per cent of officers across UK prisons had more than 10 years of experience in 2017 – but that figure had plunged to around 30 per cent by June this year.
The prison officers’ union, the POA, pointed to government cuts as a factor in reduced staffing levels. The POA’s Mick Pimblett said the Wandsworth staffing figures were “quite disturbing”, but said there is “not a lot of difference in many establishments across England and Wales”.
The union chief said many prisons “have shortfalls in their target staffing figure, which will show as a deficit of staff available on any given day”. Mr Pimblett said staff don’t take overtime “due to burnout and the very fact that these are dangerous and stressful places to work”.
Amid questions about whether terror suspect Khalife should have been held in a category A prison, rather a category B facility, around 40 inmates were moved out of Wandsworth this week. Justice secretary Alex Chalk said they were moved out of “an abundance of caution” and an extra governor had been put in place.
On Friday Keith Bristow, former director-general of the National Crime Agency, was appointed as the investigator into the alleged prison escape. His probe will consider whether relevant protocols were in place, how Khalife was given access to materials, along with staffing levels and security measures.
Mr Hinds responded to the Ms Allin-Khan’s question by saying the government had brought in 4,000 more prison officers than in March 2017. “We are also recruiting 5,000 prison officers across public and private prisons by the mid-2020s,” he added.
