Treatment of UK prisoners during Covid meets UN definition of torture

By and large we know by now how hospitals, care homes, schools and most other state-run institutions coped, or didn’t, with the Covid pandemic. But not until now, with this shocking, distressing, authentic and academically robust study, have we had the unvarnished truth about conditions in UK prisons.

The report, by the prisoner-led charity User Voice and Queen’s University Belfast, reveals that 85% of prisoners reported being locked up for at least 23 hours a day, for long periods. The consequences were sadly predictable: anxiety, depression, self-harm and off-the-scale mental illness.

“Prisoners are...