Police seal off open prison as foreign inmates flee
Maybe if Tony Bliar and his cronys spent a little more time keeping their trousers up, not invading foreign lands and actually looked after our country we might start to sort out a few of the problems this country has :wall:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/grap...pnopen27bt.jpg
The Daily Telegraph
By David Sapsted and John Steele
ARTICLE ONE
Quote:
The Home Office had to send in hundreds of prison officers and police to seal off an open prison yesterday to thwart a feared exodus of more than 100 foreign inmates.
In the latest Home Office debacle, officials acted after 11 foreign prisoners - including a leading Jamaican drugs dealer facing deportation - simply walked away from Ford open prison in West Sussex. Apparently they wanted to avoid being sent home at the end of their sentences.
John Reid, the Home Secretary, faced further embarrassment when figures obtained by a local newspaper showed that, between April and December last year, more than 1,500 offenders in East Anglia defied the courts and removed their electronic tags.
The unprecedented operation at Ford, near Arundel, involved about 500 prison officers who rounded up all 141 foreign inmates - more than a quarter of the prison's population - for relocation to 20 closed prisons around the country.
Nick Herbert, the shadow prisons minister whose Arundel and South Downs constituency includes Ford, accused the Government of trying to cover up the scandal.
"It seems extraordinary that prisoners awaiting deportation, or who are likely to be deported, should be held in an open prison at all when they have little incentive to remain in custody," he said.
"Public confidence in the penal system is severely undermined by this kind of mismanagement."
A Home Office spokesman said the prisoners were removed "to review their security category due to the current high abscond level at Ford among this group of prisoners". He added: "The operation follows a review by senior Prison Service managers, who have been carefully monitoring the situation at Ford for the past week."
What appears to have prompted the action was the disclosure this week that Ransford James Baker, a drug dealer due to be sent back to Jamaica, was one of those who disappeared this month from the minimum security, Category D prison.
A Home Office source said none of the 11 who fled was a violent or sex offender. They were all coming to the end of sentences for offences such as drugs, fraud, driving and going equipped to burgle.
The operation to seal off the accommodation blocks at the prison began at about 5am with Sussex police closing off nearby roads and patrolling the perimeter with dogs.
Almost 500 prison officers, some in riot gear and brought in from Doncaster, Maidstone and Coldingley in Surrey, moved into the 540-inmate jail to begin rounding up the foreign inmates.
"We got called out here by the Prison Service at the last minute because the Home Office is panicking," said a police source. "It has had a stream of disasters and it doesn't want another one.
"We know they are just covering their backs and we are annoyed about it."
A prison officer said: "Someone at the Home Office must really have the hump with all these foreign prisoners escaping. They must have decided enough was enough.
"It makes you wonder, though, why a drugs dealer facing deportation was sent here for the last few weeks of his sentence in the first place.
"It was a fair bet that, even before the clampdown, he was going to do a runner."
As the operation began, the prison officers, carrying shields and long batons, moved in to the accommodation area, lining the perimeter fence, as the process began of separating the foreign prisoners from British nationals.
By the afternoon, all 141 foreigners had been moved in a fleet of vans.
"They will be fully and rigorously risk assessed before any decision is made on the level of security that they require", said a statement from the Home Office.
"This operation is not being repeated in any other open prison and there are no plans to do so.
"There has been no indication of a higher rate of absconds by foreign national prisoners at any other open prison. We are keeping this situation under constant review."
Mr Herbert called on Mr Reid to tighten the regime at Ford. "It's obviously unacceptable that any offenders are leaving but I am particularly concerned about foreign nationals," he said.
"The Home Office is in complete chaos and the whole system needs overhauling."
Prison with a holiday camp regime
ARTILCE TWO
Quote:
Her Majesty's Prison Ford, aka HMP Butlins, has not enjoyed a good press in recent years.
Though its education and resettlement work has won praise, the prison, near Arundel, West Sussex, has found it hard to live down a reputation as one of the Prison Service's cushiest establishments.
Even without a list of celebrity "old boys" that includes George Best, Lord Brocket and Ernest Saunders, the Category D prison has seen a string of incidents that has produced lurid headlines.
In 2003, it was revealed that inmates were popping out for a stroll down the River Arun to stock up with booze and smoked salmon at a local Tesco.
That was a year after Ford - which straddles a main road, with admin, workshops and farms on one side, and accommodation and education blocks on the other - suffered the indignity of a break-in, when burglars took mobile phones and tools.
There was an outcry this year over the fact that David McGreavy, a triple child killer dubbed the Monster of Worcester, had been allowed to go on unescorted trips.
Learco Chindamo, the former teenage hoodlum who stabbed to death the headmaster Philip Lawrence, has also been allowed out on day trips from the prison despite being jailed for life 10 years ago, with a minimum sentence of 12 years. Other inmates have served their time by getting full-time jobs - and full-time wages - working as bus drivers.
On average, two prisoners a week abscond and the prison has one of the worst records in Britain for keeping track of its inmates, with almost 10 per cent walking out and never being seen again.
One of the more embarrassing incidents involved the con man Anthony Passmore. Two months after he received a six-year sentence for fraud, City of London detectives arrived at the jail to ask him about millions of pounds they hoped to recover.
It was only then that they discovered Passmore had gone, never to be seen again.
The prison is one of 15 open jails in England and Wales. However, possibly because its "catchment" area is the South East, which has a high number of immigrants, Ford has 40 per cent of the "foreign national prisoners" in open prisons.
The ability of the authorities to keep track of a foreign prisoner influx was highlighted in a recent report by the prison's Independent Monitoring Board covering the year to October 2003. It noted the increase in the prison population had led to Ford taking inmates "unsuitable" for its regime aimed at preparing low-risk offenders for return to society.
Re: Police seal off open prison as foreign inmates flee
So... why is this ? Corrupt guards ? Carelessness and crappy security ? Insufficient prison guards/personnel ?
Re: Police seal off open prison as foreign inmates flee
It is an open prison. So hardly a prison at all. Handy for re-assimilating offenders near the end of their term, useless as an actual detention centre.
Re: Police seal off open prison as foreign inmates flee
Don't you just love it (ala Keegan :laugh4:) , when such a popular government implodes. :inquisitive:
Re : Police seal off open prison as foreign inmates flee
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Originally Posted by ShadesWolf
Nice cottages. I haven't made any vacation plans yet, and I hear the South East must have a lovely countryside.
I think I'm going to smuggle some drugs into Britain and get me a fine holiday at the British taxpayers expense.
