Parkhurst regime `totally inadequate'

The following are excerpts from the memo sent to the Prison Board by Brian Landers, finance director of the prison service:

"Whitemoor and Parkhurst have shown prison service line management to be totally inadequate."

"We devote repeated sessions to the intricacies of urine testing policy, with shoals of advisers, but I do not recall discussing Judge Tumim's warning on Parkhurst and we certainly did not invite the governor or even the area manager to present an actionplan.

[Judge Tumim had warned that security at the prison on the Isle of Wight was inadequate three months before three dangerous criminals went on the run.]

"Have we got 133 governing governors who can all be relied upon to manage their establishment optimally on their own? The answer is clearly `no'."

"Area managers are responsible for the performance of their establishments. I simply do not understand how Tumim can go into Parkhurst and, reportedly within hours, realise that security was so inadequate that we had to take immediate action on receivinghis report. What had the area manager been doing?"

"As one governor put it to me, the real problem is that `nobody manages the managers, if a prison officer breaks the rules we dump on him, if a governor breaks the rules everybody smiles'."