Jack, you misunderstand entirely the magnitude of HOW primitive and barbaric the conditions are. It is only recently after appeals to central authorities that the practice of 'slopping out' was outlawed. This means removing the contents of the buckets prisoners had to piss and shit in during lockup time.
Also personal safety within prisons is at a minimum. Its one thing if a fight breaks out in the central space of the wing, there it is visible and can be broken up quickly, likewise prison riots. But entirely another when somebody is in their cell during unlock time, doing whatever, keeping themselves to themselves, its perfectly easy for one (or a group) person to go into another cell (and this often happens for completely benign reasons also) with ill-intentions, be it robbery, physical assault, or worse.
I know of one person who, because of quite how medieval the conditions are, attempted to commit suicide by ramming a broom-handle up their arse and jumping off the top bunk in a 2-man cell. That ought to give you an idea of quite how bad things can be. And nobody can go to seek help, other than if they have sufficient support, to round up a posse of other inmates and go and put somebody in hospital. Anybody who would report an incident (to prison staff) would instantly end up a pariah and have the entire wing turn against them and be considered fair game for any kind of action whatsoever.
And if that doesn't give you an idea of how bad things can get. I..know of somebody who had to resort to, to avoid being raped and killed by some hard-case thug with a pack of similar friends, responsible for a terror-campaign initiated without any reason than their entertainment, to have to resort to the extermination by poison of the ringleader. Successfully I might add. Should conditions be SO bad, that inmate on inmate killings in a defensive capacity need be resorted to in order for an inmate to preserve their own life and to avoid being violated sexually? (the ringleader thug in question made the fatal mistake of issuing a threat and telling the..other inmate, what they intended) and dissappeared shortly after to hospital. To the best of my knowledge they did not return.
And there are also things I have not personally witnessed, but just as bad or worse, on documentaries about UK prisons, that I couldn't even stand to watch. People being forced to fight each other like dogs for drugs by other inmates, being filmed on smuggled in mobile phones, known of by the screws, who were uninterested in putting a stop to it. Couldn't keep watching the rest of it. It was as barbaric as the leaked footage from abu ghraib and guantanamo bay. Not joking, I've seen both and there was little difference, only in (some of) the methods.
