In addition, prisoners who are taken to court from one prison in the morning but end up at another at the end of the day, often find their property is missing. It can take months to get it back and even when it arrives at the prison gates it can take weeks to reach the right cell - a journey which should take about three minutes. These possessions often include phone numbers of lawyers and loved ones. To lose them causes the prisoner considerable grief.
Almost two-thirds of the prisoners I meet have some form of mental illness or are drug addicts who should never be in a prison in the first place. If they were housed in hospitals and special units the prison population would plummet. It would almost certainly also reduce the numbers of suicides and those who self-harm.
Prisons are also seriously underfunded. A couple of months ago, the service was told to make £60 million year-on-year "efficiency savings" for the next three years. The only way to do it has been to cut staff. Many prisons are now barely safe. At my prison two officers are regularly left in charge of 360 unlocked prisoners while they have their periods of association and take their regulation exercise - but not when it rains for fear of a prisoner slipping and claiming compensation - or have lunch. Prisoners are now kept in their cells from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. They spend the time either sleeping or seething.
Staff rely on the goodwill of the prisoners and the fact that drugs make them docile to keep things calm.
Even so, a riot in the near future seems almost inevitable somewhere. Some prisoners express their frustration by going on dirty protests, a repugnant and increasingly popular mode of expression that involves smearing their cells with excrement. An alternative attention-seeking device is to pull out the wash basin or toilet in their cell and cause a flood.
Prison officers are poorly paid and virtually all of them at some time during their career will be attacked, spat at and insulted by a prisoner. Should they respond with anything less than tact they will be suspended and possibly sued for racism/bullying/prejudice or whatever a canny and manipulative prisoner or his lawyer can think of.
