British jails are now so bad that other countries are refusing to extradite criminals here on the grounds it would be “inhumane”. That may still come as a bit of a shock for a nation that, despite everything, has an entrenched habit of considering itself the gold standard.
But of course we are not, at least when it comes to prisons. Here are just a few more details from a recent report that compiled testimonies from officers: rooms flooded with “the smell of urine from rodents”; broken CCTV cameras; floors breaking down into trip hazards; “ongoing legionella issues”; kitchens with no heating for eight years; a jail that has been without hot water since April 2022. Things have got so bad that some prisons are commissioning inmates to do the repairs themselves.
