by Felicity Collier

VIOLENCE in prisons across England and Wales is “spiralling out of control” amid an overcrowding epidemic, international human rights investigators revealed yesterday.

The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), the Council of Europe’s prisons watchdog, warned that “systemic failings” meant “none of the prisons [it] visited could be considered safe for prisoners or staff.”

Recorded incidents of assault, self-harm and suicide are at record levels — in the year to September there were 25,049 assaults in prison across England and Wales — equivalent to over 60 every day.

But the CPT warned that under-reporting and downplaying incidents that were reported meant the true scale of violence was likely to be much worse.

After visiting Doncaster and Pentonville prisons last spring, the committee said that these figures “fail to afford a true picture of the severity of the situation.” It warned that violence is “spiralling out of control” and overcrowding is “chronic.”

Many prisoners were spending up to 22 hours per day locked in their cells, while some juveniles in Cookham Wood Young Offenders Institute were spending up to 23 and a half hours a day locked in their cells to deal with violence, which investigators branded “inhuman and degrading.”

The CPT said the first step to reversing the tide of violence was “a swift reinforcement of staffing levels.”

Prison Officers Association deputy general secretary Andy Darken said the union had long raised concerns over disguising the nature of incidents at Feltham Young Offenders Institute in 2012 and raised the issue nationally in 2015.

But HM Prison and Probation Service is still yet to provide the union with statistics it requested.

Mr Darken, who worked at Feltham, said that many inmates preferred to stay locked up in their cells because they felt vulnerable “when they were out mixing with other prisoners.

“Due to a reduction in staff, we didn’t have the manpower to offer them the protection we thought they needed.”