Cold showers triggered jail riot

Officers from the prison service’s elite “Tornado” teams were sprayed with white paint as they stormed their way into the jail to end the worst prison riot since Strangeways in 1990, which lasted 25 days.

Some 240 inmates have been moved out of the prison, which is run by the private company G4S. This weekend police are going through CCTV footage and taking statements to pinpoint the ringleaders.

Yesterday Liz Truss, the justice secretary, said: “Violence in our prisons will not be tolerated and those responsible will face the full force of the law.”

The extent of the disorder at what was regarded in Whitehall as a well-run prison has taken ministers by surprise. There was no sign that anything out of the ordinary was about to happen when half a dozen inmates staged what appeared to be a routine protest by climbing on netting put up outside cells for their own safety at around 9.30am on Friday.

Inmates threw white paint at prison officers

Although there are reports that televisions were broken, the lack of hot water “was the straw that broke the camel’s back”, said a source. Tensions may also have been inflamed by the departure of more than 30 officers from the jail in recent weeks, the Prison Officers Association (POA) said.

Claims from inmates that they had not been fed for two days were dismissed by both the Ministry of Justice and G4S, with one source saying it was “not just untrue but impossible”.

An officer who went to deal with the protest is believed to have been rushed from behind, overpowered and may have been threatened with a hypodermic needle before inmates seized his keys.

“Once they had the keys, the officer had to withdraw and it was ‘let’s go party — we have got the wing to ourselves,’” said a source.

Claims that it was a senior official of governor rank who was attacked and lost the keys were denied.

The officer involved withdrew from the wing and padlocked and chained the door in an attempt to contain the disturbance as the troublemakers started unlocking fellow inmates from their cells. Soon all 300 prisoners were on the loose and unsupervised.

Rioters then smashed down the padlocked door to a neighbouring wing containing another 300 inmates. They used a heavy metal food trolley to batter it down, according to one account, although this was disputed by G4S.

From there inmates swept into two more wings, believed to have contained training facilities rather than cells.

G4S asked the justice ministry to take control of the prison at lunchtime but it was 8.35pm before the dozen Tornado teams, each made up of officers, were ready to go in, backed up by 80 police.

After passing a makeshift barricade erected by the rioters, the teams took two wings back under control within minutes. The incident ended just after 10pm.

Three inmates were reported to have been taken to hospital. One admission is understood to be drugs related.

Whitehall sources said the low number of casualties showed the disorder could have been much worse. “Quite a lot of the prisoners, 300 or so, went straight back into their cells — it is not like you had 600 people running like barmpots through the prison,” one said.

A second source added: “It was a handful of troublemakers who happened to get control of keys, which meant they could rampage, but given how many prisoners were on those wings the damage was minimal in terms of injuries etc. That tells you it was not a mass protest.”

The riot is the fourth disturbance behind bars in two months and underlines how volatile the prison system has become. Truss is hiring 2,500 new prison officers as part of a £104m drive to improve safety, but that is less than half the number lost since 2010.

Mike Rolfe, national chairman of the POA, said more than 30 staff had left Winson Green, the site of HMP Birmingham, in recent weeks. “We’ve been warning for a long time about the crisis in prisons and what we are seeing... is not unique to Birmingham, but it certainly would seem this is the most recent worst incident since Strangeways,” Rolfe said.

The riot will also raise questions about G4S, the controversial private security firm that signed a 15-year contract to run the prison in October 2011. Senior justice ministry sources this weekend made clear that the company would bear the full cost of the damage.

The last independent inspection of HMP Birmingham in 2014 said the “availability of drugs was high”. But ministers did not view this as out of the ordinary and said it was generally well managed.

“A prison less likely to go belly-up I could not think of,” a source said.

Disturbance at Hull prison

HMP Hull is said to be “on the brink of riot” after a disturbance which has reportedly led to the prison being put in lockdown.

Karl Turner, the MP for Hull East, said the trouble started as 15 inmates arrived after being transferred from HMP Birmingham following the riot there on Friday.

Turner told Sky News: “They were put into G Wing, which is the induction wing, and a disturbance began thereafter.

“I’m told that it’s on the brink of a riot, and a good number of these 15 have kicked off – that’s how it was described to me – on G Wing, and prison officers lost control.”

He said he had been told that staff had been threatened with violence and that prisoners were refusing to go into their cells.

HMP Hull, which was opened in 1870, has just over 1,000 inmates made up of male prisoners below category A status and young offenders.