UK's Dirty Prisons

[strozzi]

We are currently seeing a lot of reports about prison conditions. One of the complaints is that prisons are not up to a satisfactory state of cleanliness. We don't have complaints that our ships or our military establishments are not clean. Shouldn't prisoners be responsible for the cleanliness of the accommodation that they have chosen to grace ?

[andy hughes]

One difficulty is the age of some prisons, which makes cleanliness difficult to maintain. A seond point is security - you can't leave a few guys to scrub a corridor like you can in a barracks or an airforce base, there is the small matter of them feeling like wandering off and climing walls. Any prisoners working have to be supervised, which is a high-manpower situation. Overcrowding simply exascerbates this situation, so the problem can get worse. In theory, prisoners should keep their abode clean, but practicalities as above can intervene.