Tumim bows out with 'concentration camp' jails warning

Judge Stephen Tumim yesterday warned that prisons were in danger of turning into concentration camps.

The outgoing Chief Inspector of Prisons urged Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, not to adopt the controversial report by Sir John Learmont into the recent Parkhurst and Whitemoor escapes because it tipped the balance "dangerously" towards security at the expense of humanity. "I find that wholly unacceptable. It's the road to the concentration camp if you go too far along it and it's quite wrong. It's morally wrong," he said.

"On that issue I'm entirely against Sir John Learmont and I hope ministers will not follow the path he is offering," Judge Tumim told BBC Radio. "If you put security above humanity what happens if a man tries to climb a wall? On the Learmont doctrine what do you do, shoot him?"

Judge Tumim's attack on the report came as it emerged that Derek Lewis, the head of the Prison Service who was sacked as a result of the Learmont findings, was seeking his pounds 35,000-plus bonus on top of his pounds 125,000 a year salary and pension rights, in his claim for unlawful sacking.

Mr Lewis maintains that he met all the performance targets he was set and should therefore receive his bonus. The Home Secretary is known to want to settle the claim but paying a bonus to someone he sacked would not only cause him embarrassment, but call the dismissal into question.

Judge Tumim was speaking as his eight-year contract as Chief Inspector comes to an end. Mr Howard apparently decided not to renew it because of a fundamental clash between the two men over penal policy. Judge Tumim's high profile and relentless campaign for more humane conditions in Britain's jails did not sit comfortably with Mr Howard's austere "prison works" policy. Even more embarrassing for a Home Secretary anxious to prove his tough law-and-order credentials was Judge Tumim's criticism of poor management, drug-ridden jails and security failings.

Matters came to a head over the two most embarrassing lapses of security - the Whitemoor and Parkhurst escapes. There was a clash over the quality of the judge's report into Whitemoor and a worse row over the fact that his urgent warnings over security failures at Parkhurst three months before the escape had been ignored.

But there was no indication of a rift between the two at Judge Tumim's farewell reception, when Mr Howard praised him as "an outstanding public servant".

Yesterday in his final annual report, Judge Tumim kept up the pressure, warning that the independence of the inspectorate must be maintained and criticising the service for failing to tackle the problem of hard drugs in top-security prisons. He warned: "The dominance of hard drug-taking as a sub-cultural activity negates positive aspects of the regime and undermines the service's strategies.

"We do not doubt some drug dealers continue to be linked to outside gangs. There seems to be little control over the movement of known dealers within the dispersal system."