News / Society

‘Britain’s prison killings hit record high’

Sunday, 02 August 2015 1:37 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 03 August 2015 9:43 AM ]

UK prisoner deaths are said to be on the rise. (file photo)

A new report points to record high violent deaths in detention of inmates in English and Welsh jails over the past months.

“Every self-inflicted death, every homicide and every assault in prison is a shocking event which should not have happened. As the justice secretary said a fortnight ago, our prison estate is out of date, overcrowded and, in far too many cases, insanitary and inadequate,” Andrew Selous, the prisons minister, told the Times.

There were seven deaths between the beginning of 2015 and June, four more than in the previous 12 months.

Assaults between prisoners rose by 12 percent to 16,885 between the start of the year and March and assaults on staff rose by five percent to 3,372. Incidents of self-harm rose by 16 percent, RT cited the latest figures from an annual prison report published in July.

“This is compounded by a prison population consisting of more serious offenders than in the past, and the greater availability of new psychoactive substances which cause violent and psychotic behavior,” the prisons minister noted.

“More prisoners were murdered, killed themselves, self-harmed or were victims of assaults than five years ago. There were more serious assaults and the number of assaults and serious assaults against staff also rose,” Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, told the Times as the study was published.

“It cannot go on like this. The cost is unsustainable.”

Reflecting on Britain’s prison crisis, Hardwick said inmates are more likely to die in jails today than they were five years ago. He said murders, cases of self-harm, serious assaults and violence are on the rise in male prisons.

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