Inside Britain’s privately-run ‘anarchy’ jails where lags take Zombie drug Spice, start 50 fires a week, brawl with inmates and eat COCKROACHES
The Sun Online can reveal the anarchy inside Britain's private jails, as lags take Spice, eat cockroaches and leave terrified staff cowering behind locked doors
SECURITY firm G4S has been stripped of its contract at HMP Birmingham after the unit descended into chaos - but its not the first time a private jail has caused controversy.
The Sun Online can reveal the anarchy inside Britain's private jails, as lags take Spice, eat cockroaches, leave staff cowering behind locked doors and set up to 50 fires a week.
A damning report revealed thugs at HMP Birmingham - which was run privately since 2015 - openly used drugs behind bars and roamed around unchecked, as terrified staff locked themselves in their offices.
The filthy conditions of the prison were revealed in Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke's damning report - finding rats, cockroaches were running around communal areas that were covered in blood and vomit.
The Ministry of Justice have now stepped in and stripped G4S of its 15 year contract after the prison descended into anarchy.
Staff at HMP Birmingham were asleep or had locked themselves in rooms when inspectors came while inmates were openly taking drugs and carrying out assaults, it was revealed.
G4S have said HMP Birmingham is an "inner-city remand prison which faces exceptional challenges including increasingly high levels of prisoner violence towards staff and fellow prisoners."
The rescue plan will immediately see number of prisoners slashed by 300 and the current governor and senior management staff booted out after months of failure and violence, with the Prisons Service set to be in charge for six months.
Managing Director of G4S Custody & Detention Services Jerry Petherick added they "welcome the six month step-in and the opportunity to work with the Ministry of Justice to urgently address the issues faced at the prison.”
But HMP Birmingham isn't the first private prison to cause controversy, as in March this year, it was revealed lags at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool were smuggling Spice into the prisons through letters laced with the Zombie drug.
Following a crack-down on the drug, prison wardens discovered relatives had taken to putting the mind-bending drug on post so their loved ones could get high by smoking the paper at the Cat B men’s prison - one of the most violent and over-crowded in the country.
Altcourse director Steve Williams said: "Each grade of NPS is different because it’s manufactured... You could have a hardened drug user take it and have a real bad effect from it.
“We now have to check the mail because they are spraying it on paper and they smoke bits of the paper, which gives them the same effect. We’ve had to take measures where we now photocopy mail - we’ve had it coming in on prisoner’s birthday cards, family photos, solicitor letters. It comes in through a wide range of means.”
And The Sun exclusively revealed how in 2016, lags across the country started up to 50 fires a week with 2,600 incidents that year - and two privately-run jails had the worst record with almost 200 fires sparked between them.
Thamesmead Prison in London, run by Serco, had 101 fires in 2016 - more than any other jail in England and Wales - while HMP Birmingham - the scene of major riots which caused £2 million worth of damage in December 2016 - had 82 fires or one every four days.
And in a bizarre clip filmed at the private Brum prison last year, a lag appeared to be challenged to a I'm A Celebrity-style cockroach eating contest.
In the clip, the inmate appears to pluck cockroaches collected on a plastic tray before stuffing the creatures in his mouth as fellow lags shout: “Eat that! Eat that!”
He then shouts: ";I’m A Celeb HMP! I’m A Celebrity, get me out of HMP Birmingham!”
The unnamed prisoner crunches the creepy crawlies in his mouth and swallows them.
A recently-released inmate saw the film on a fellow prisoner's Instagram account and said he was disgusted by the ability of prisoners to get mobile phones while doing time.
He said: “I just want to show how easy it is for prisoners to have phones. I have seen prisoners in there with iPads and stuff... This video just proves how much of a joke it is to say most prisoners can’t get phones.”
In February last year, we exclusively revealed how a have-a-go hero rugby-tackled an escaped lag after he got away from bungling G4S' HMP Parc stafff in South Wales.
The man grabbed the inmate as he was being chased by officers outside Velindre Hospital in South Wales, where the lag was undergoing cancer treatment.
He slipped from the ‘escort chain’ being used by two prison officers to hold him secure and sprinted into the hospital grounds followed by the guards, who shouted warnings.
But a member of the public grabbed the inmate, who was bundled to the ground with the help of officers.
HMP Peterborough - run by the private Sodexo Justice Services - came under fire earlier this year after it emerged a convicted child sex attacker made his escape from the prison by scaling walls 'like Spiderman' in January.
Gintautas Urbonas, 52, was less than a year into his 12 year sentence for the attempted rape of a child and child abduction when he had been working out in the prison yard and was being escorted back to his wing when he ran ahead of a group and scrambled up the prison wall.
He was recaptured two days later, and pleaded guilty to escaping lawful custody at Cambridge Crown Court in February and was sentenced to 16 months in prison, to run consecutively to the third-way mark of his current sentence, meaning it will now be eight years before he will eligible for parole.
Just months later, we exclusively revealed a group of lags filmed themselves as they wrenched out another inmates TOOTH in a shocking torture video circulated on Facebook Live and WhatsApp.
The brazen cons used a phone to video the punishment attack on a prisoner at the tough Peterborough jail.
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The gruesome video shows one lag towering over the terrified victim, who was forced to sit down and appears to have been sedated.
The thug – in a grey prison-issue t-shirt – leans over his prey as one of his pals says: “Is this cool?”
The victim, sitting in a booth at the 900-prisoner Category B jail, appears to plead “No, no, no” before one of the gang jokes: “Sorry it was an accident.”
The burly ringleader – wearing black rubber gloves - then seems to remove a tooth with pliers before pushing his stricken victim against the wall.
As the footage pans back onto the bearded victim, blood is seen all over his face as well as on the wall behind him.
As the disturbing 37-second video ends the gang can be seen raining down brutal kicks on the prone victim.
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