Former magistrate calls Winchester Prison 'rotting, festering cesspit'

Georgia Swift told Channel Four news that the prison, in Romsey Road, is rife with drugs, violence and rats, saying that prison staff were encouraging violence and that the governor knew but did not care.

Ms Swift said that she was unaware of the true state of the prison until her partner, who was not named, was sent there on remand.

Winchester Prison (Image: Newsquest) READ MORE: Winchester Prison needs 'urgent improvement', watchdog warns

The former magistrate said: “Staff members were telling me it was unsafe, it’s toxic. It is a rotting, festering cesspit.”

She continued: “(The prison) was grotty, it was dirty, it was crumbling. Men were catching rats in buckets in their cells, and then having to keep rats under buckets. I’d be on the telephone in the evening and you’d hear people screaming because a rat had run along.

“Within the first ten minutes of being on the wing (my partner) was offered heroin, and it becomes very apparent that there is a big problem with spice in the prison. He was taken from a single cell and put in a cell with a spice user who was actively using spice in his presence.”

Ms Swift went on to say that her partner, who is a recovering drug addict, was initially not provided with an opiate-blocking injection that he needed. She also claimed that the prison has a major problem with violence, with staff paying prisoners with contraband to carry out attacks on other prisoners – to keep the prisoners “quiet” and “to shut them up”.

She continued: “Very soon it became apparent by talking to some of the staff how big the problem was in there. And staff were telling me that staff were taking the drugs in there, they were telling me, a social visitor, that their colleagues were taking the drugs in there and that the governor didn’t care.

“I had family members coming to me on visits concerned that the staff were paying other prisoners to commit violence against their family members.

“I don’t like to use the word ‘corrupt’ lightly, but I think that is what we’re looking at.”

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Ms Swift told Channel Four that she had reached out to authorities both inside and outside the prison, but that she rarely got a reply to her concerns or action.

She concluded: “Sitting in the adult crime court, and remanding or sentencing people to custody in Winchester, I couldn’t do that.”

This comes weeks after a prison watchdog wrote to Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood to issue an urgent notification for improvement at the Category B jail after “very poor” inspection findings.

As previously reported, the watchdog reported that drug use was rife, but that the prison’s approach to testing was weak, and a third of CCTV cameras were broken which “compromised security”.

In a statement, Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation, James Timpson said: "The situation at Winchester illustrates the scale of the crisis the government inherited.

"Staff are already working hard to drive the improvements needed and we will publish an action plan in the upcoming weeks to support their efforts."