By John Talliday-
Prisons are more violent because of gang culture and legal highs, the head of the National Offender Management Service told Radio 4’s programme.
Michael Spurr was speaking in response to the worst prison riot since Stangeways over 25 years. Yesterday, inmates took control of four wings at the privately-run HMP Birmingham, smashing the place up and running a reckless riot that had complaints of inadequate staff and living conditions at the heart of it.
Spur told Radio 4’s Today programme, ”there had been a number of “underlying problems” at prisons across the country in recent year, including closures and reductions in staffing.
“At the same time, there have been external factors that have really impacted on the way we run our prisons.
“There is more gang-related violence, much more serious violence from prisoners who come into prison now than previously and that has been fuelled also by psychoactive drugs, so-called legal highs Mamba and Spice, that have been sent and pushed into prisons, supplied into prisons that have really changed the dynamic.”
Trouble erupted at HMP Birmingham, which is operated by G4S, shortly after 9am on Friday when prisoners overpowered staff and managed to wrestle keys from them. Disgruntled prisoners were said to be upset about a number of factors that included lack of access to television and hot water, amid general discontent and anger about the lawlessness in the prison. A lawlessness many of them have been a part of.
A number of inmates seized keys from prison officers and atempted to break into the prison category where vulnerable sex offender are held. Their intentions must have been to batter them to a pulp. Now, legal high is being blamed for the riots, but at best it may have been an influential factor, not the whole reason. Leaving prisoners without television and hot water when they know they are entitled to those basic supplies would naturally bring the worst out of them.
Especially if they are also high on legal high. And bored prisoners will have no boundaries on the quantity of legal high they smoke.
The smuggling of legal high into many of U.K prisons is something known- the eye of media.com have covered that here a few times recently. Legal high turn many of its users crazy, with many contemplating death when hit by the lethal ingredients in it.
Legal high contains a poison used to kill horses and Sharks. It is extremely dangerous and so incompatible wth the human system, that those who take it might as well be called crazy. Its effect can be even heightened when several people in jails with different reactions to it smoke it.
The Birmingham prison riot is the third of such riots this year in the U.K in the last couple of months. Hundreds of Bedford prison inmates went on the rampage last month, and a national response unit was also called to control an out of control riot at HMP prison in East Sussex.
Its terrible that these riots have continued to happen, something drastic needs to be done.