Oh, it looks like Daniel

Let's be absolutely clear here, Daniel Abed Khalife, who escaped from Wandsworth prison yesterday, was being held on remand having been charged with, though not convicted of, terrorism and Official Secrets Act offences.  

As such, under English law he is entitled to be considered innocent until proven guilty. 21 year-old Daniel has not yet been tried or convicted of any crime and his case was due to be heard at Woolwich Crown Court in November. We cannot take his escape from remand as a sign of guilt. For all we know it could be a sign of desperation. Much has been made of his army training and resilience but he is little more than a boy. Who wouldn't despair in his circumstances, in a notoriously overcrowded, insanitary and unsafe Victorian gaol?

Whatever his guilt or innocence may be - and I wouldn't presume to anticipate his trial and sentencing (if, that is, he is ever recaptured) - his escape from prison has highlighted systemic failures in our prison system. These are long overdue examination as the situation has long been a disgrace.in a modern European democracy. HMP Wandsworth is one of the worst examples of this, though, sadly, by no means uniquely so. 

As a Category B facility, Wandsworth currently houses almost twice as many inmates as it is supposed to do, in squalid conditions. Originally opened in 1851, when it was a model of the panopticon design, it is outdated and seriously understaffed by between 30-40%, which leads to inmates being kept in their cells for up to 23 hours per day. It is allegedly.overrun with rats, mice, violence and drugs and is reportedly boiling hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. In short, it is not fit for purpose in the 21st century.

At this point one can almost hear Middle England crying "hurrah!, that's exactly what prison should be like, a punishment and a deterrent". Unfortunately (and despite what Tory Home Secretary, Michael Howard, might have assured them back in 1993) prison doesn't work - or not as currently configured anyway. And if it wasn't true in the 1990s it certainly isn't now, thirty years later.  The UK currently has 87,000 prison inmates. The average prison population in Europe in 117 per 100,000. In the whole of the UK it is 352, just 3 (yes, three!) short of Türkiye. Doesn't that make you proud to be British?

Well, it shouldn't (unless you think Midnight Express is a model of enlightened prison policy), especially when judged against a backdrop of reoffending and growing crime and violence. The prison system we have now, overcrowded, understaffed and dilapidated as it is, is utterly broken. Our prisons now are academies of crime, brutalising and degrading inmates whilst not offering them anything in the way of rehabilitation, education or training for a return to society. And society is the victim. Guilty or not, Khalife has done us all a service in highlighting a long-ignored national disgrace.

There's no ignoring it now.

11:50 Sat 09/09/23: Khalife has just been apprehended in the Chiswick area. 


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