Wandsworth Prison has been placed into special measures by the prisons watchdog after a recent inspection found serious overcrowding, violence, vermin infestations, drugs and violence.

The ‘troubled’ prison still has ‘significant weaknesses’ in its security, despite a high-profile escape from the jail last year. The inspection found staff often had no idea where inmates from their wings were during the working day. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, said it was ‘unfathomable’ that attention hadn’t been paid in this area.

The inspection, conducted in April and May this year, also found there had been seven self-inflicted deaths in the last 12 months, and levels of violence were far above other similar profile prisons. Almost 70% of inmates reported feeling unsafe, and overall violence had increased since the last inspection.

The report heavily criticises the leadership of the prison, which it says is characterised by ‘inexperience and consistency’, finding ‘inexperience across every grade of operational staff was crippling their ability to bring about much needed change.’

In many cases the inspectorate found prisoners didn’t know if or when they would be let out of their cells for the day, and even when they were this might be for only half an hour in which they would have to use the phone, exercise, shower, then return to their cells.

The prisons watchdog has now placed the prison into special measures, issuing an ‘Urgent Notification’ for improvement.

The Prison Reform Trust responded to this news, saying: ‘This damning report reveals a failure of leadership from top to bottom. Ministers cannot be exempt from the criticism levelled against the prison by the chief inspector.

‘The report reflects wider problems afflicting too many local inner city prisons, including too few staff, and prisoners held in overcrowded and squalid conditions which are contributing to very high rates of violence, self-harm and self-inflicted death.’

They said the government is running out of options to respond to the ‘growing pile’ of urgent notifications issued across the prison estate.

In the past, the first measure in this situation would be to decant prisoners from the failing prison to another jail, but the level of overcrowding across all prisons makes this impossible.