Nearly four in five prisons do not have enough officers trained to deal with riots as part of so-called “Tornado” squads, despite rising violence and disorder behind bars, The Independent can reveal.
With the prisons crisis a major concern ahead of the general election, prison officers responded to the revelations by accusing Rishi Sunak’s government of having “gambled with safety” – as former governors warned that the ability to respond to simultaneous riots at multiple jails could be “fatally compromised”.
Figures reveal a shortage of riot-trained officers as part of the mutual aid Tornado programme, which aims to control disorder inside a prison before it escalates. The “scandalous” shortfall was first revealed just weeks ago by this publication, as the government admitted Tornado numbers had plummeted by nearly a third in five years.
Just 1,620 Tornado officers were in place across the prison estate as of February, down from 2,310 in 2018, prisons minister Edward Argar previously admitted in response to a parliamentary question by his Labour counterpart Ruth Cadbury.
While ministers claimed in March that there was “no minimum staffing requirement for Tornado teams”, further questions from Labour saw Mr Argar admit that the government “aims to have 2,100 volunteers trained in readiness for Operation Tornado” – as he revealed each prison’s recommended Tornado officer quota.
Laying bare the scale of the crisis, analysis by The Independent of the newly released figures suggests that just 23 out of 109 prisons with a Tornado quota had enough riot-trained officers as of February.
Of the 86 prisons without enough officers, some of the most dire shortages were at HMP Five Wells and the now-closed Cookham Wood – each of which had zero of a recommended 18 Tornado officers – and Swaleside, which was 15 short. General staff shortages meant all three prisons were reliant on officers loaned from other jails – a scheme that cost the taxpayer £16.2m last year.
Wakefield was among the worst, having just 22 out of a recommended 36 Tornado officers, despite being among several northern prisons forced to loan their officers to other jails to “paper over the cracks” caused by the staffing crisis – a process that is hampering staff access to training courses, including for Operation Tornado.
