STAFF shortages are to blame for a prison drugs epidemic, a new report says today.

Inspectorates found that HMP Exeter faced an “almost daily challenge of items such as drugs being thrown over the wall.”

Violent incidents at the jail were also far higher than at other local prisons and inspectorates warned that the situation could get worse.

The government’s chief prisons inspector Peter Clarke connected a “failure of leadership” to jails being “full of drugs.”

“As I walk around the wings of a prison, if I get a group of prisoners approach me and say, ‘Are you the governor?’

“That tells me an awful lot about the visibility of the leadership in that prison,” Mr Clarke said.

Prison Officers Association (POA) executive member Mark Fairhurst told the Star: “I couldn’t agree more with Peter Clarke.
“It’s a failure of leadership at the very top.”

Referring to the POA’s repeated warnings over the consequences of understaffing, Mr Fairhurst said: “They have refused to listen to this trade union, time and time again.”

The Victorian Exeter prison, which holds just under 500 inmates, saw 96 assaults, 45 fights and 173 self-harm incidents in the six months prior to inspection.

There had been 10 suicides since the previous inspection in 2013, with one more occurring shortly after inspectors packed their bags.

Mr Fairhurst said he had visited the Exeter jail, where a “mini-riot” in November saw a prison officer held hostage.

“They’re doing the best they possibly can with the resources they have,” he said. “It’s quite obvious they are desperate for staff — they need more staff to overcome all the challenges they face.

National Offender Management Service chief executive Michael Spurr said: “We recognise that the prison needs more staff to deal with the problem of drugs, to improve safety and to provide more purposeful activity for prisoners.

“The government have provided additional funding to increase staffing levels and good progress is already being made to recruit new officers.

“I’m confident that, together with these extra resources, the governor will be able to fully address the recommendations in this report and significantly improve the performance of the prison.”