The latest inquest into a death at Wandsworth Prison found that David W died of heatstroke.
David W, 46, was remanded into custody at HMP Wandsworth on 6 December 2021 and was due to appear in court later that month. Only 9 days later he was found lying unresponsive in his cell. Despite valiant attempts by staff and by ambulance workers to resuscitate him, he was pronounced dead shortly afterwards. His body temperature was 39.9C, well above the normal range. His inquest last week concluded that he had died from hyperthermia (heat stroke). But how can a middle-aged man, whose heart was found to be normal, come to die from the heat while in the care of the State?
The Covid-19 pandemic was still at its height at the end of 2021. The first British death from the new Omicron variant was announced at about this time. Prison regimes in the UK were heavily restricted and some prisoners were being isolated. So was David suffering from Covid-19? It appears not - he was swabbed twice but, on both occasions, the results were negative. He had interactions with medical staff nearly every day he was in prison, so if he had some other acute underlying medical condition there had been many opportunities to pick this up. He did appear to be suffering from a mild infection and was observed behaving in a tired and confused manner. But such symptoms are commonplace and do not by themselves explain why he would be dead only a short time later.
HMP Wandsworth is, like many other British prisons, a Victorian building with dilapidated infrastructure. Reports published recently by prison inspectors (HMIP) and by the prison’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) highlight the wide range of problems being faced, including poor conditions, overcrowding and understaffing. The financial collapse of Carillion in January 2018 led to the Ministry of Justice taking over control of facility management through an entity called GFSL, which has struggled to cope with a long backlog of required repairs and improvements and too little money to fund them.
The main reason that David W’s body temperature was so high was that the heating system on his floor failed. The boiling hot pipes created cell conditions which were described by a member of staff as being “as hot as the Sahara”. We can sympathise with the ambulance staff who had to enter those conditions and try to resuscitate Mr Wise while wearing full PPE. Despite many attempts to notify GFSL of the conditions, it took over 24 hours for temperatures in the cells on this landing to be brought back to normal. For David that was just too long. If you are locked in a space which is just 6 feet by 8 feet and is poorly ventilated, there is simply nowhere for hot air to escape. In an overcrowded prison estate without much spare capacity, inmates could not easily be moved either internally or to another prison, especially during a Covid pandemic. Although officers did try to help prisoners to cool themselves down, the severity of the heating problem was not communicated to senior management.
David was one of 371 fatalities in prisons in England and Wales in 2021. 20 more men have died at HMP Wandsworth since he died, half of these being self-inflicted. Poor prison conditions can be a matter of life and death and need to be addressed urgently. Queen Victoria’s name is still associated with the prison system, but she would not have been amused if she saw the state it is in now.
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