Prisoners at 'squalid' HMP Wandsworth 'locked in cell for 23 hours a day with rats and sewage'
| Published date | 09 April 2024 |
| Publication title | MyLondon (England) |
Liz told MyLondon: "I had given five or six men very small amounts of money, less than £25 when they were about to go out, or were seriously self-harming and they were destitute, and very anxious about the fact they had no money. And the prison said that made me a risk to the prison."
Liz also runs a charity that sends necessities like jigsaw puzzles and craft kits into the prison, but this has also been stopped since the investigation. She is now leading a campaign to improve conditions in the prison, after her experiences there over the last few years.
"What I want to do is make sure that the prison becomes decent, becomes a safe place to hold people," she said. HMP Wandsworth is a men's remand prison, where people who have been charged with a crime but are awaiting trial but deemed unsafe to be granted bail are held.
Locked inside a cell for up to 23 hours a day
"A prison cell in Wandsworth is the size of most people's small bathroom," Liz said. It contains a bunk bed, sink, toilet, and opposite the bunk bed a counter and one chair. This is where two men live for up to 23 hours a day.
There is no communal eating -all prisoners eat meals in their cells. Liz said: "So one of you sits on the chair and one of you sits on the bottom bunk, which means your crouched. The other thing you can do is one of you can eat your meal on the chair and the other can sit on the lavatory".
"But it's so small that in the 23 hours or 22 hours you're locked up in it, you can't both do exercise at the same time," Liz pointed out. There are also serious problems with vermin in the prison, Liz claimed, as prisoners will throw their empty food containers or cans out of the window to avoid the smell settling in the damp and airless cells.
"We have dreadful rat and mouse problems," Liz said. "But you have to understand why people are doing it." Men will also flush unwanted food down their toilets to avoid the smells, putting further pressure on an overworked and antiquated plumbing system. Sewage would flow back up through the showers and come up through the shower drains, Liz said.
And when the men are allowed...
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