Prison service and ministers face questions over terror suspect escape from Wandsworth

Following Daniel Khalife’s arrest, the prison service and ministers are facing tough questions over how he suspect managed to escape from HMP Wandsworth and remain at large for four days.

A former director general of the prison service has criticised the “mess” in the system which he believes played a part in ex-soldier and terror suspect Khalife’s escape.

Phil Wheatley spoke of the “chaos” of the prison system, with similar concerns highlighted by ex-justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland.

Khalife, 21, was recaptured in Greenford, north west London on Saturday morning, ending a four-day manhunt following his breakout from Wandsworth Prison.

“It is very difficult to make anything work well when you are just managing day by day to fumble your way through with too many prisoners and not enough staff,” Mr Wheatley said.

“So, I would be surprised in the long run if that wasn’t one of the factors that led to things not working right.

“The system is just about at maximum capacity, it’s overflowing out into police cells, that’s driven by longer sentences.

“The Government has been very keen on longer sentences for criminals but they haven’t supplied the places with enough staff to supervise them, nor have they managed to maintain existing prisons.

“They’ve spent what capital they’ve got on trying to build new places, meanwhile some of the older accommodation has had to be taken out of use because it can’t be maintained – so it’s all a bit of a mess, it doesn’t look like a well-planned, thought-through policy that has been resourced.”

i revealed that HMP Wandsworth was more than three years overdue for a planned security upgrade when Khalife absconded.

CCTV and perimeter security systems at Wandsworth jail were supposed to have been bolstered in 2020 in the wake of an earlier escape by a prisoner in 2019.

Following Khalife’s escape, Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor, admitted that “in an ideal world” Wandsworth would be shut, but “there are only just enough prisons” for the population of inmates.

Meanwhile, former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland has called for more prison space to be built so that old prisons like HMP Wandsworth can be closed.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There is no doubt that our Prison Service is a forgotten service in our country.

“It’s a service that either people don’t want to talk about or just don’t know enough about.

“We run the prisons service at a hugely hot rate, about 98% capacity and I think that isn’t a desirable state of affairs. We need more capacity to allow for flexibility.”

Prison officers’ union the POA has attacked a lack of funding for staff shortages that has left shifts going uncovered. At the time of Khalife’s escape, it said there were less than 100 prison officers on duty at Wandsworth when it should have been at least 120.

Nick Hardwick, a former chief inspector of prisons, said the debacle was a “symptom of much wider problems in the prison system” and accused ministers of trying to shift blame onto staff.

“Everybody has known that Wandsworth has been in a critical state for months because of their shortages of staff,” he told i.

“This is not something that’s come out of the blue, this is something that ministers and senior officials will have been warned about and they’ve failed to heed those warnings.”

The POA has called for an “urgent” royal commission in the wake of the incident, saying that, without one, problems are “just going to get worse”.

Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said that he would leave “no stone unturned” in the investigations launched after the escape of Khalife.

Ian Acheson, a former head of security at Wandsworth and prison governor, said Khalife’s audacious escape represented a “catastrophic system failure”, including “multiple breaches of human and physical security” on checks at the prison that morning.

Mr Acheson, who has advised the Government on counterterrorism in prison, said that vehicles coming onto the prison estate was a “well-known vulnerability”.

He told BBC Radio 4: “Any vehicle entering the prison should have been searched after driving into an airlock before being escorted to the kitchen while being filmed by security cameras.

“You would have mirrors, extendable poles used by searching staff inside the airlock to make sure there was nobody clinging onto the bottom of it and obviously the contents would be inspected.

“So it is quite staggering that all of those systems of human and physical security failed [and allowed] this person to escape.”

Met Police commander Dominic Murphy said police will ensure that anyone who helped or supported Daniel Khalife in his escape faces justice.

He told reporters: “Now he is in custody, and he is in custody in a west London police station, this is still an ongoing investigation so he still has to stand trial for the original offences for which he was on remand and clearly we now need to go and complete the rest of our investigation into his escape.”

He added: “If we identify anybody who helped and supported him we will be looking for them and ensuring that they also face justice.”

Labour have demanded answers from the Government following Khalife’s arrest.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper wrote on social media: “Thank you to all the police & intelligence teams involved in the search and arrest of Daniel Khalife – very welcome news he has now been caught.

“Now we need answers about how on earth a prisoner charged with terror & national security offences could have escaped in this way.”

Wandsworth prison’s performance was rated a “serious concern” and watchdogs had issued a string of warnings about the jail in the past year before Khalife escaped.

The decision to keep Khalife in Wandsworth, a Category B jail, rather than a Category A maximum security like Belmarsh has also been criticised.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said remand prisoners are generally held in Category B prisons but risk assessments are carried out to determine the appropriateness of specific placements.

But John Podmore, a former governor at HMP Brixton and HMP Belmarsh, told the BBC Radio 4’s World At One: “My view is that he should have been at Belmarsh.

“It’s much more suited to the levels of security that someone like this – charged with, not convicted – needs. I can’t understand why he wasn’t at Belmarsh.”

There are also questions about why Khalife was allowed to work in a kitchen, a job usually reserved for more trustworthy prisoners.