The former director of Altcourse prison told an inquest that he believed he did "all he could reasonably do" to make it safer despite rocketing levels of violence on his watch.
Bob McCombe, who took over at the private G4S run jail in May 2013, was grilled over what strategies senior managers implemented in the months before inmate Darren Ashcroft was stabbed to death on November 14, 2014.
Mr Ashcroft, 35, died after being attacked by 41-year-old Keir Michael on the Fazakerley prison's troubled Valentines Green wing - where police investigating his death later found 22 makeshift weapons including knives and razor blades.
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Michael had previously made threats to harm staff and fellow prisoners, and intelligence reports suggested he had weapons stashed around the wing.
The jury inquest, sitting into its second week at Gerard Majella Courthouse, has heard the prison had no effective system for monitoring whether recommendations from its three intelligence analysts, including cell searches, were actually carried out.
The prison had also been subject to a report from HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) in June 2014, which criticised the prison's strategy to reduce violence as "lacking direction" and analysis of incidents as "underdeveloped and inadequate to inform strategy".
Mr McCombe, who was previously governor of Strangeways prison and HMP Wymott before retiring from the public sector and joining G4S, said at the time of his appointment violence and anti-social behaviour were already beginning to rise in Altcourse.
He told the jury: "The link was with the new psychoactive drugs. When the drugs started coming in you get gangs involved, you then get debt, you then get violence.
"We were at the very forefront of it at that time. They were legal at the time, and with the property having around 400 entries every day some people were coming in with drugs secreted internally to pay off debt or to make money.
"We also had intelligence there was a corrupted member of staff, who was later sent to prison for smuggling mobile phones and drugs."
Assistant coroner Joseph Hart suggested the problem with psychoactive drugs, including Spice, in prisons was a national issue at that time and asked why levels of violence at Altcourse were higher that other prisons of a similar profile.
Mr McCombe answered: "Liverpool is very much always at the forefront of drug trends. The government launched a drug campaign recently with Boris Johnson; it was no coincidence that was in Liverpool".
Mr Hart asked what was done to combat rising levels of violence and anti-social behaviour among the senior team.
Mr McCombe described implementing weekly stability meetings to encourage "joined up thinking" on security matters between senior managers, implementing more severe sanctions for rule-breaking, rolling out a restorative justice programme to settle disputes and increasing referrals to independent adjudicators - judges with the power to increase sentences.
However, Mr McCombe also accepted that between June and November 2014, he did not consider increasing the "extremely busy" and "overstretched" three-strong team of intelligence analysts monitoring security despite the criticisms in the HMIP report.
Mr McCombe accepted that in June 2014 the team were receiving around 700 security reports, containing intelligence about risks in the prison, each month - which was the highest he had ever seen in his career.
However, he accepted that no attempt had been made to increase the size of the team between the HMIP report in June and Mr Ashcroft's death in November.
Mr Hart said: "This may be over simplistic of me, but if the words 'analysis of incidents was underdeveloped and inadequate to inform strategy' were used in June 2014, why didn't you get another analyst?"
Mr McCombe conceded expanding the analysis team "made perfect sense" but said it "was not considered."
Mr Hart said: "Forgive me, the solution that's the most obvious and makes perfect sense is the one that was not considered at the time?"
Mr McCombe replied: "That's right sir."
Nick Stanage, representing Mr Ashcroft's family, also questioned Mr McCombe, suggesting that spiralling levels of violence had been repeatedly raised in management meetings.
He asked: "Your management of this issue was not good enough was it Mr McCombe?"
Mr McCombe replied: "I think we did everything we could reasonably do at that time. It's a very complex population."
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