Management errors blamed for prison riot

Lack of security, bad management and the deployment of inexperienced staff allowed the two days of rioting at Everthorpe Prison over the new year.

The catalogue of prison errors identified by an internal inquiry echoes the findings of the damning reports into the recent escapes from both Parkhurst and Whitemoor top security prisons, which have led to claims that the service is in crisis.

A clampdown on illicit drug use at Everthorpe coupled with supplies of tobacco and phonecards running out over the Christmas and New Year holiday were identified as the main causes for the disturbances. The inquiry said it resulted in "boredom, frustration and tension" within the Cambridgeshire jail.

But the inquiry team found that requests for extra staff in the face of mounting tension were refused. "The inquiry team consider that this decision was questionable," the report says.

The team, headed by Ian Lockwood, the prison service area manager, also found that the jail was unsuited to hold the type of prisoner sent there. Further, it said the Government's privatisation programme had aversely affected staff morale. "A substantialproportion of management time had, in the months prior to the incidents, been directed towards a response to the establishment's inclusion in the market testing bid procedure," the report said.

George Howarth, Labour's prison spokesman, said: "This report represents yet another damning indictment of Michael Howard's privatisation agenda for the prison service."

But Derek Lewis, director- general of the prison service, denied claims of a crisis and malaise in the service and while acknowledging the seriousness of the recent escapes and the fact that five guns had been found in the country's jails last year, defended its overall record on security. Escapes in general were down 40 per cent in the last 21 months, he told the Commons home affairs select committee.