It is a scandal that has all the potential to lead to a Grenfell fire-style disaster – one that could be prevented by relatively simple measures at low cost, and yet is still stymied by complacency.
Around half of British prison cells lack even the most basic of fire alarms, years after the danger was first identified, and with at least 11 inmates in recent years losing their lives as a result – all entirely avoidable tragedies.
A Mother of Six Could Not Be Rescued
One particularly distressing case, reported by The Independent on Thursday, involves a mother of six at HMP Eastwood Park, who could not be rescued from her burning cell for more than half an hour because the outbreak had gone unnoticed, and the locked door handle was too hot to touch. The coroner in the case noted that fire detectors are still missing from her cell some three years after her death. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, given the neglect routinely shown to Britain’s prison estate and its occupants, it is actually against the law for the Ministry of Justice to tolerate this situation. As is only right and widely applied in workspaces across the country, adequate fire alarms have to be installed, and there is no good reason why jails should be exempted.
Capacity Excuses Are Unacceptable
The ministry pleads that there aren’t enough places for prisoners to be installed while the work is carried out – to which the only answer can be that such capacity has to be found, even if it means juggling people around and allowing groups or the safer prisoners to be in short release. For what it’s worth, Labour ministers promised to rectify things and make all cells fire-safe by 2027. It is a matter of life and death, and has become more urgent with a widespread use of vapes. Unlike tobacco, these can self-combust and lead to a particularly intense blaze, and one that firefighters have found difficult to control because of the nature of lithium-ion batteries used. It is the same factor behind an increase in house fires caused by e-bikes, and in refuse lorries as old laptops are discarded.
Cell Fires Double Amid Vape Use
But in a prison, the fire can take place in a small, confined, unventilated area, and with the potential to spread and with even more significant injury and loss of life. Cell fires have more than doubled over the last five years, and are running at a rate of eight per day; malfunctioning vape devices are invariably the cause. It is all part of a regrettably familiar pattern of official negligence that has left Britain’s jails in a parlous state. They are notoriously overcrowded as a result of the ever more draconian sentences demanded by the politicians and the public, which are never accompanied by any sense that the extra capacity will need to be funded through taxation before it can be built.
Systemic Neglect in Prisons
The crisis was highlighted shortly after Labour came to power and the government was forced to release some less-serious prisoners to prevent the system from collapsing. Outdated IT systems mean that too many genuinely dangerous individuals are accidentally released before their time.
By contrast, there are around 2,600 people in jail under pernicious and unjust “imprisonment for public protection” sentences handed down many years ago and often for relatively trivial crimes. Drug abuse and violence is widespread, and prison officers, having to operate under austerity budgets for decades, are undertrained, overstretched and demoralised. A report by the former justice secretary David Gauke last year showed that custodial sentences are too often inappropriate and counterproductive, and driven more by a popular taste for retribution than any desire for rehabilitation. A more rational sentencing policy would help ease the pressures – but for those who have to be detained for the safety of the public, there is no necessity to house them in unsanitary death traps.
We should not have to wait for something like a repeat of the Grenfell fire to notice what is wrong behind the forbidding walls and barbed wire of Britain’s prison estate; the jails must be treated like any other public building such as a hospital, a school or, indeed, a block of flats. A prisoner’s life is worth as much as anyone else’s.
