Scandal-hit HMP Wandsworth is to receive additional staff and £100 million after a damning report by the prisons watchdog.
Charlie Taylor’s inspection found failures in leadership “at every level”.
The jail in south-west London had come to be “symbolic of the problems that characterise what is worst about the English prison system”, he said.
A sustained decline happened “in plain view of leaders”, Mr Taylor added when publishing his “catastrophic” inspection on Tuesday.
Prison staff displayed an “inability to account for prisoners during the working day” despite an investment of almost £900,000 since Daniel Khalife’s alleged escape in September 2023.
Last week, prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu pleaded guilty to misconduct after video of her having sex with an inmate in a cell was shared on social media.
De Sousa Abreu, of Fulham, will be sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court on November 7.
The Ministry of Justice said it was deploying extra specialist staff and redirecting £100m from across the prison service that will be spent over five years to “deliver urgent improvements”.
The inspector issued an urgent notification in May after finding alarmingly high rates of self-harm, dangerous levels of violence and nearly 50 per cent of inmates taking drugs. The smell of cannabis was “ubiquitous”, he found.
Mr Taylor’s report concluded that Wandsworth jail was “not safe” and 10 self-inflicted deaths had occurred since the last inspection.
The prison was “severely overcrowded” with four in five of the 1,521 men sharing cells designed to hold one person.
Around three quarters of prisoners reported spending more than 22 hours a day in “appalling conditions” in their cells, the report noted.
Mr Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, said: “The level of chaos we found at Wandsworth was deeply shocking.
“The prison population crisis has undoubtedly compounded the pressures on the jail, but the appalling conditions at Wandsworth did not appear overnight and are the result of sustained decline permitted to happen in plain view of leaders in the jail, HM Prison & Probation Service and the MoJ whose own systems clearly identified the prison as struggling.”
Mr Taylor added: “There was a degree of despondency amongst prisoners at Wandsworth that I have not come across in my time as Chief Inspector.
“Many well-meaning and hard-working leaders and staff persevered at Wandsworth, but they were often fighting against a tide of cross-cutting, intractable problems that require comprehensive, long-term solutions.
“For this troubled prison to begin to recover, Wandsworth needs permanent experienced leaders at all levels who are invested in the long-term future of the prison to improve security, safety and guide their less experienced colleagues.”
One former prisoner described being jailed there as being like “a form of torture”.
Darrell, who did not reveal his surname, told BBC London conditions were “just horrendous”, adding: “For someone like me who has mental health conditions, yeah, it’s very, very difficult, so the noise is a lot.
“I believe that I do have a form of autism, and to be put in that environment is just like constant torture. [It] just made my mental health condition a lot, lot worse.”
He was confined to his cell for 23 hours a day “basically going insane”.
The MoJ said other measures it was taking to bolster prison security and safety included the deployment of specialist security and drug staff and the introduction of new leadership.
It added that advanced violent reduction training sessions would be made available to staff, as well as “regular beefed-up drug searches” and improved access to rehabilitative services.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “This is the reality of a prison system in crisis.
“Cells are overcrowded, infrastructure is crumbling and our hard-working prison staff are at risk of violence and harm.
“Our staff deserve better and we are taking immediate action at HMP Wandsworth to do what is necessary to protect the public, lock up dangerous offenders and make prisons safe for the brave staff who work there.”
Khalife is accused of fleeing custody while being held on remand over spy charges. He allegedly strapped himself underneath a food delivery lorry and was arrested a few days later.
The former soldier denies all the charges against him and is due to stand trial in October.
Andrea Coomber KC, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said it was “hard to remember a report as scathing, emphatic, and utterly devastating” as “today’s appraisal of the chaos in Wandsworth”.
Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said HMP Wandsworth was “emblematic of a system that has been running on fumes for many years, through our overuse of prison and chronic underinvestment in the prisons estate”.
The chief executive of the social justice charity Nacro, Campbell Robb, said the report highlighted alarming failings “from dangerous levels of overcrowding, to soaring rates of violence and squalid conditions reminiscent of a Victorian workhouse”.
