PRISON officers told Justice Secretary Chris Grayling yesterday to “open his eyes” to Britain’s jails meltdown after inspectors unearthed rising violence and overcrowding at an understaffed Kent facility.

An unannounced visit at HMP Elmley on the Isle of Sheppey revealed how prisoners are caged in cramped cells for 23 hours at a day in a jail peppered with bird excrement.

Prison Officers Association (POA) general secretary Steve Gillan said the findings “mirror everything that this union has been saying.”

Chief inspector Nick Hardwick warned that previously average levels of violence at Elmley were “deteriorating rapidly” with a 60 per cent increase in incidents and a sharp increase in serious assaults over 12 months.

Staff shortages meant prisoners were turned away from work and education, with English and maths classes unavailable to many of the third of prisoners who lack basic skills needed to get a job upon release.

Mr Gillan said the findings showed that the government’s “talk about rehabilitation” was just talk.

“The reality is that classes, education, reoffending behaviour programmes have all been cancelled because there aren’t enough staff,” he said.

He revealed that 250 prison officers at any one time are now being dispatched to prisons like Elmley to plug dangerous gaps in staffing — costing the taxpayer thousands in expenses and accommodation costs each week.

Suicides had also risen among inmates housed in rooms meant for one or two but housing two or three apiece, inspectors reported.

Mr Hardwick warned: “Like other prisons in the south-east of England, Elmley struggled to deal with the pressures created by a large number of staff vacancies.”

Officer numbers in England and Wales are at similar levels to 1993, but prisoner numbers have shot up from 43,000 to nearly 86,000 since then.

A recruitment crisis is compounding the problem of staff shortages — particularly in expensive south-east England.

Vacancies are increasing amid plummeting morale and a cuts-driven push to slash numbers via early retirement.

Mr Gillan warned that a push to hire 1,700 extra prison staff by next April would not be enough because people were “leaving as quickly as they come.”