Screwed

When Daniel Khaliffe escaped from Wandsworth in September 2023 the nation got a glimpse into then chaos at the heart of its prison system. This came as no surprise to Ian Acheson who had once governed Wandsworth.

Screwed is the inside story of the collapse of His Majesty's Prison Service, told from the front line. Ian Acheson served as both officer and governor in a twenty-year career that saw him move from the landings to the boardroom.

During that time, he witnessed Her Majesty's Prison Service, the uniformed organisation he was proud to serve, collapse into a hopeless and helpless bureaucracy presiding over feral penal dustbins warehousing the worst of human failure.

This hard-hitting account looks at the politics and the operational decision-making that have driven our prisons to rock bottom, where extreme violence, indolence and victimisation are normalised.

Concluding that the situation is not beyond repair, however, Acheson outlines how a new corporate culture and mission can achieve a much-needed revolution in the way the service is run.