A brand new £400 million prison in England is already facing serious questions before it has barely got going, with former workers painting a deeply troubling picture of life inside its walls.
Ex-staff have come forward to describe what they call a chaotic atmosphere, where not enough officers are on the ground and training has been nowhere near good enough to prepare people for the job. For a facility that cost nearly half a billion pounds to build, the accounts make for uncomfortable reading.
Former workers say the problems were not minor teething issues you might expect from any new institution finding its feet. Instead, they describe systemic understaffing that left officers stretched thin and struggling to maintain basic order and safety across the prison. When there are not enough trained staff to manage a prison population, the risks to both inmates and officers go up sharply.
Training was another major flashpoint in the accounts given by ex-employees. Several described feeling underprepared and under-supported when they were put to work, with the induction and preparation process falling well short of what the job actually demands. Prison work is one of the most demanding and at times dangerous public sector roles in the country, and getting training right is not optional.
The situation raises wider questions about how new prisons are being opened and staffed in England at a time when the entire prison system is under enormous pressure. The government has been under the spotlight over prison overcrowding for months, with emergency measures introduced last year to release inmates early in a bid to free up space. Building new prisons was supposed to be part of the longer term answer to that crisis.
But if new facilities are opening without the right number of staff or proper training programmes in place, critics will argue the government is simply creating new problems rather than solving existing ones. A shiny new building means very little if the people working inside it do not have the support and numbers they need to run it safely.
Prison officer unions have long warned that staffing levels across the estate in England and Wales are dangerously low, and that recruitment has not kept pace with demand. The accounts from this particular prison appear to fit a pattern that the unions have been flagging for years.
The Ministry of Justice has faced repeated calls to address the staffing crisis in prisons more urgently, with concerns not just about safety but about the ability of the system to actually rehabilitate offenders and reduce reoffending. Prisons that are chaotic and understaffed tend to be places where rehabilitation programmes struggle to function properly, which ultimately costs the public more in the long run.
For the workers who have already left this new facility, the experience clearly left a mark. Coming forward publicly to describe the conditions takes some courage, and their accounts deserve to be taken seriously by those responsible for running and overseeing the prison.
The government will no doubt point to investment in new prison capacity as evidence it is taking the overcrowding crisis seriously. But investment in bricks and mortar only goes so far. The people who actually work in these places, day in and day out, are what makes or breaks a prison. And right now, according to those who have already walked away from this one, something has gone badly wrong.