The crisis in Britain’s prisons: A system on the brink of collapse
The crisis in Britain’s prisons is undeniable – soaring levels of violence, rampant drug use, chronic overcrowding, deteriorating conditions, and dangerously low staffing levels. But while these problems are well documented, one crucial aspect is often overlooked: the legal ban on prison officers striking, a restriction that has left thousands of frontline staff powerless to demand better conditions for themselves or the prisoners they manage.
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA), which represents thousands of staff in jails across the UK, has repeatedly warned that the collapse of the prison system is not just a crisis of funding, but a crisis of control – both inside prisons and in how officers are treated as workers. Denied the basic right to withdraw their labour, officers have been forced to continue working under extreme conditions that have only worsened in the wake of budget cuts, rising violence, and government inaction.
Since 1994, prison officers in England and Wales have been legally prohibited from taking strike action under Section 127 of the Criminal Justice Public Order Act. The justification? The government argues that industrial action by officers would endanger public safety and risk disorder in prisons. Yet, this ignores a fundamental truth: prisons are already unsafe, precisely because officers have no power to fight for better conditions.
Prison officers have been shamefully neglected – they are expected to manage an increasingly dangerous prison population with fewer resources, all while being subjected to an ever-rising number of assaults. Prisoner-on-staff assaults continue at a rate of over 8 per day, every day of the year. Without the right to strike, prison officers have no real power to demand the staffing levels and safety measures needed to protect themselves and maintain order.
A recent National Audit Office (NAO) report has sounded the alarm on rising levels of squalor and disrepair in our prisons, with the maintenance backlog doubling to £1.8 billion in the past four years. Outsourcing has resulted in delays and substandard repairs, directly impacting the safety and well-being of both staff and inmates. The POA is actively campaigning to bring maintenance contracts back in-house, but without the leverage that the right to strike provides, their ability to challenge this systemic neglect remains severely limited. The Labour Party has pledged the “biggest wave of insourcing for a generation.” With these failing maintenance contracts also set to expire, the government now has a crucial opportunity to deliver on that promise and end the cycle of mismanagement and decay in our prison system.
With the state of British prisons literally crumbling year after year, the argument for lifting the strike ban has never been stronger. As long as staff are trapped in a cycle of worsening conditions, high attrition, and unsafe work environments, repealing this punitive and outdated legislation is not just necessary – it is an urgent must.
The crisis in Britain’s prisons is not just about prisoners. It is about a workforce that has been pushed to breaking point, denied the right to fight for change, and forced to endure unacceptable conditions. For 30 years, POA members have been restricted, finding themselves under a court injunction since 2017 and threatened with contempt of court for taking any form of industrial action.
The ban on striking has allowed successive governments to systematically underfund and understaff prisons with no real consequences – except for the officers and inmates trapped in an environment that grows more volatile by the day and a system that risks spiralling further out of control.
As the union has consistently warned, without urgent reform, prisons will continue to decline, staff will continue to leave, and violence will continue to rise. The question now is whether the government will finally listen, or whether they will actively allow a system that is failing at every level to collapse entirely.
Kim Johnson is the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside.
