UK Prisons: The Great Escape

 

Our prison system does appear to be in something of a crisis at present....

It has been full to bursting over at least the last 5 years. Reasons quoted for this include lack of investment by successive governments, over-enthusiastic sentencing policies., etc , etc. 

No doubt the current administration will at some stage attempt to blame it exclusively on the now infamous ‘Tory Black Holes’ as they do for most other things that have already failed, or are currently failing, under their watch….(I wouldn't be surprised if they even blamed the Tories for their own administration's eventual demise at the hands of Reform!)

The sad fact is that we really can’t afford to imprison as many people as we do – not surprising given that the current cost of maintaining one prisoner in jail for a year is now well north of £50k. Building new prison estate to modern standards, let alone replacing all our Victorian jails as we ideally should, would cost tens if not hundreds of billions. Even then, we would need to forcefully eradicate the organised criminality and hard drug use that is rife within our jails before being a prison officer became at all attractive enough to staff them all fully, and we could claim our prison system was 'up to scratch'.

To be brutally honest, the current administration clearly don’t have much of a clue how to sort this one out. There was a flurry of optimism when the bright idea of reducing the earliest release date from 50% to 30% of a prisoner's full sentence term was mooted. The results since then however have been at best lacklustre; what little relief that did come from the early release of several thousand extra prisoners has now evaporated, with prisons now running at more than 98% full again. Many of those released early have already been returned to their cells after breaking their parole conditions.The general public are becoming increasingly concerned about the sheer volume of prisoners being released early, often with no support and an established drug addiction acquired while inside.

Last week’s debacle, where not just one but 2 prisoners were let out of Wandsworth by mistake, hard on the heels of the media-grabbing Colchester error, must be a strong contender for the ‘Lammy of the Year award 2025’, not least because the instigator of the Dead Ringers-inspired award is now personally responsible for the ministry in charge. Even more so, given that at least one of the 3 prisoners involved knew he shouldn't have been released, immediately asked to be let back in...and was refused.

How and why did all this happen ?

Our prisons have always been somewhat ‘leaky’, in that prisoners can, and do, get released by mistake. 

The usual trickle does seem to have turned into something of a flood over recent months, however, and this is causing both concern to all of us, and acute embarrassment to the authorities. Outright escapes are fortunately fairly rare, but the idea of a convicted murderer or repeat sex offender being released onto our streets at all, let alone ‘in error’ does not inspire confidence in the general population. 

Authorities put the increase in accidental releases down to the complexity of the tracking process and the lack of staff (the knee jerk imposition of yet more paperwork by Justice before any prisoner can be released will probably hinder rather than help solve the problem).

There is, however, another interesting theory now going the rounds that could help us solve the conundrum….

It revolves around the fact that most processes that aim to maintain a 'steady state' (i.e. a balance between input and output), and have some form of overflow system to allow this.

The recent outrage in the media about sewage releases into our rivers, for example, brought to light the fact that water companies have automatic 'emergency' sewage release policies when heavy rainfall events swamp the capacities of their sewage works. This is a necessary safety valve'when used correctly, and is designed to prevent sewage backing up into our domestic plumbing systems. It effectively dumps untreated sewage into rivers temporarily through sluice-controlled outflows. Unfortunately the water companies have been caught abusing this safety feature and just dumping continuously to save on investment and running costs. This has got them into hot water (apologies for the unintended pun) recently, and still needs to be addressed. Might it therefore not be possible that prisons have a similar ‘auto overflow’ system for 'surplus' prisoners at times of excess ?

A simple ‘prisoner chute’, perhaps located in the prison laundry area, whereby the nearest prisoner was 'acquired' in some way and then ejected down the chute and into the street, might well be the mechanism employed. Prison Laundry areas do seem to be a favoured spot for actual escapes recently, so why not put them to even better use ? 

This 'overflow facility' would not be active all the time, but could be prorammed to cut in automatically (possibly via an AI-controlled monitoring system) when the total prisoner complement reached a certain level. Prisoner 'extraction' would, however, need to be random and without warning, so as not to arouse suspicion amongst the inmates and staff (or indeed attract crowds of hopeful inmates to the laundry area !).  

I would advise those leading the minister's enquiry to eliminate this possibility as a priority in their ‘root cause analysis’ before addressing other possible causes.

The classic and timeless John Cleese sketch about a hapless Zookeeper would seem particularly apt as an entertaining note on which to finish this blog.

Enjoy…..

First published 7.11.25; Revised 12.11.25