Amber Rudd and David Lammy visited HMP Wandsworth on Thursday as Rudd began a six-month review of the prison system. The visit put the prison's overcrowding, drone drops and repeated security failures at the center of her search for long-term solutions for the Prison Service.
Rudd said she would draw up policies within six months and described the purpose of the changes as providing "guard rails". She also said, "I think that various governments have turned a blind eye to issues to do with prisons and then they suddenly do something when something goes badly wrong" and added, "what are we going to do medium to long term?"
Amber Rudd at HMP Wandsworth
Rudd was appointed as the independent reviewer of the prison system. Her review begins at a jail that has already exposed several of the failures she is now meant to address, including escape, mistaken release and staffing problems that have led to public embarrassment for the Prison Service.
Those failures include Daniel Khalife's escape from HMP Wandsworth in 2023 by strapping himself to the underside of a delivery truck. Two years ago, prisoners were released under an emergency release scheme in front of the gates of HMP Wandsworth, and last year Linda De Sousa Abreu was jailed after being filmed in a cell having sex with an inmate. In November, a sex offender and a fraudster were accidentally released from HMP Wandsworth because of clerical errors.
David Lammy and Amber Rudd
Lammy and Rudd examined five intercepted drone packages at HMP Wandsworth. Two of the intercepted packages were 70cm long, one had smaller packages inside marked with initials, and another was covered in fish hooks to help it be pulled through a cell window with a fishing line or hook. A prison officer cut open a third package intercepted in the spring, and large buds of skunk and rolling tobacco spilled on to the table.
Andy Davy, Wandsworth's governing governor, said, "If the weather is good we get absolutely peppered, usually between two and four in the morning". He said the drone deliveries usually arrive at that time when conditions allow, showing how drugs still reach the jail despite the search procedures on the ground.
HMP Wandsworth in November
Conditions at HMP Wandsworth have improved since a catastrophic inspection in 2024 led to a pledge of an extra £100m and a cut in the number of prisoners. Even so, the latest inspection report said there were 1,430 prisoners in cells meant for 894, and prisoners are often locked up for 22 hours a day. Those who do not have prison jobs are granted about 50p a day, while prisoners can buy a handheld fan through an electronic kiosk on each landing.
About a quarter of jailed offenders across England and Wales are held in Victorian prisons such as HMP Wandsworth, and heat worsens conditions when people spend long stretches in cells without air conditioning. For readers, the immediate change is not a new rule yet but a six-month review that could alter how the Prison Service handles security, capacity and basic conditions at the worst-pressured sites.
