The Ministry of Justice has splashed out £500,000 on heavy-duty tech to smash through barricaded cell doors as worries mount over a "summer of violent unrest" in prisons.
The equipment, which includes measures like "anti-barricade door jacks" in order to break down metal-reinforced doors in under a minute, is part of a drive to crack down on inmates closing off parts of prisons to guards - which the Government says is at its highest level in three years.
In contract documents revealed by Labour, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was found to have bought the equipment - which it called "essential" in "today's challenging custodial environments".
Shabana Mahmood, the Shadow Justice Secretary and MP for Birmingham Ladywood, described the spending push as a "last-ditch attempt [by the Tories] to deal with the summer of violent unrest and riots".
The MoJ has splurged on measures like "anti-barricade door jacks" in order to break down metal-reinforced doors (file photo)
PA
But a Prison Service spokesman said: "We make no apologies for taking every necessary step in keeping our staff and prisoners safe."
According to Ministry of Justice figures, incidents of "barricades or prevention of access" have reached their highest level since 2019/20.
Almost 1,400 of the incidents, defined as when "one or more offenders deny access to all or part of a prison to those lawfully empowered to have such access, by use of a physical barrier", were recorded in 2022/23 - the fourth-highest number since records began.
And the news comes amid growing worries over prison overcrowding, with some governors raising concerns over a repeat of the infamous 1990 Strangeways riot, where a prisoner was killed and 147 officers and 47 inmates were injured.
MORE ON PRISONS:
Shadow Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood warned of a "summer of violent unrest and riots"
PA
Tom Wheatley, president of the Prison Governors' Association and a former governor at three British prisons, told the Telegraph that overcrowding had turned jails into a "tinderbox" by fuelling drug use, violence and instability.
He said: "We are quite near to complete chaos at the moment. We are operating in a system that is running under significant pressure.
"We have been through times before when the population pressure was difficult to manage but I cannot remember such sustained pressure for as long a period of time."
And despite a current 70-day early release scheme in place at some of the UK's most crowded jails, some are set to run out of space entirely in just six weeks.
Though it's understood that the MoJ and Downing Street are weighing up a move to release inmates 43 per cent of the way into their sentences through the Sentencing Bill, any such plans have been cast to the wayside in the wake of Rishi Sunak's election announcement.
Earlier releases would affect some 42,000 prisoners on four-year or shorter sentences - and is considered to be a more publicly acceptable solution than replacing all 12-month or shorter sentences with suspended prison terms.
But the six-week estimate for total overcrowding - especially at prisons running at over 150 per cent capacity like Leeds, Durham and Swansea - is set to coincide with the General Election itself, prompting Wheatley to call for the next Government to push through emergency legislation as soon as possible.
GB News has approached the Conservative Party for comment.
