Inside grenade-wielding ‘Prison SAS’ who stamp out brutal riots… as rampant Spice epidemic pushes them to breaking point
THEY’RE the elite squad who swoop in to prisons to quash riots and terrifying hostage situations – armed with grenades, attack dogs and explosives that can blow off a cell door.
Known as the “SAS of the prison service”, the National Tactical Response Group (NTRG) squad are the last line of defence when violence escalates in the UK’s tinderbox jails, using a mixture of brute force and trained negotiators to bring wings back under control.
Incredibly, the squad were called out a total of 794 times last year – an average of twice a day – and incidents are up 50 per cent over the last five years.
Statistics out this week show that assaults in our prisons have increased by nearly 30 per cent in a year.
Earlier this month a police officer was reportedly stabbed in the chest at HMP Frankland in Durham while interviewing a prisoner.
Retired governor Vanessa Frake-Harris, knows all too well why the riots squad’s services are so crucial.
Vanessa, who retired from the prison service in 2013, suffered frequent attacks from inmates during her 27-year service.
“I’ve had faeces thrown over me. I’ve had punches, broke my thumb, all sorts of things,” she says.
“Prisons are violent places.”
One former governor, who was also commander of a riot squad unit, fears the service no longer have the numbers to cope with the nation’s overcrowded and increasingly violent prisons.
Professor Ian Acheson tells The Sun: “If overcrowding is not going to get tackled in any significant way until September, which is what we’re being told, then we might have a very dodgy four weeks ahead, without the national capacity to respond to concerted disorder.”
And while the majority of prisonerd don’t want a riot, which will add to their jail time, some inmates are hellbent on taking on authority.
Last resort
Shocking footage from a recent Channel 4 documentary saw notorious violent lag Charles Bronson taking on 15 members of the riot squad at Parkhurst, while dancing naked, before being sprayed with tear gas.
If violence does kick off on a wing, the first thin line of defence is the Tornado squad, which every major prison has within its walls.
Ian, who led a Tornado unit and left the prison service in 2016, explains: “The idea is every prison has a contingent available for mutual aid, which would mean that if I’m in Swansea and a shout goes up, I’m going to get support from say Cardiff.”
There are normally a dozen officers in a Tornado team but they only receive a couple of weeks of intensive training before they are sent out to face offenders armed with minimal weapons.
Ian says: “They will have stab proof vests, they will wear helmets. They will have flame retardant overalls. They carry long batons and shields.”
Since 2018, officers have also been given incapacitant spray called PAVA to defend themselves.
But staff receive little extra pay for being part of the Tornado teams and fewer of them are volunteering to put their lives on the line.
Ian warns: “There is a lack of availability of Tornado trained staff and they have declined over the last couple of years. And the fact is that some prisons had no riot trained staff at all.”
Molotov cocktails
If a prisoner or a member of staff is taken hostage it is normally the NTRG, which has bases in South Yorkshire and Oxfordshire, who must get them released.
Vanessa, who wrote a book called The Governor, says: “NTRG is the support unit that has specialist equipment.
“If you had say you had a hostage situation, they have specialist cameras, specialist microphones, things that can blow the cell door off if it’s barricaded.”
A hostage situation is traumatic for everyone involved.
Vanessa recalls that when one of her staff was held against their will “the officer was quite badly traumatised after.”
A full scale riot, with inmates throwing Molotov cocktails and taking control of wings, would require the NTRG to come in.
They are better armed than the Tornado teams and receive years of training.
Ian reveals: “There is some other equipment that’s available that the NTRG might supplement, pyrotechnics and so on.
“They’re the guys that will have access to use stun grenades or attack dogs and so on.”
But they only have 56 staff and were called out 75 times last month.
Multiple problems at different sites this summer at the same time would overstretch them.
This elite team doesn’t just operate in emergency situations, they can also help governors root out drugs and weapons.
Vanessa, who was governor of security and operations at Wormwood Scrubs in West London, says: “I’ve called them out lots of times, because they help, if you want to say, lock down the jail and do a full search of the jail.
“They’ll bring in drug dogs, they’ll bring in specialist search equipment, to look so down drains and things like that.”
Drug ‘epidemic’
She believes one of the main causes of increased violence is the growing access to illegal substances.
In the past year the amount of drugs found in cells has gone up by 44 per cent, with 21,145 incidents, and reports suggest spice is flooding the wings.
In May, the synthetic drug was even used to poison prison staff at Swaleside in Kent, with 25 becoming ill and three needing hospital treatment.
With figures showing that overcrowded conditions have risen for a third year in a row, the drugs add to the volatile nature of the jails.
Vanessa explains: “You’ve got gangs and all sorts in jail so you are bound to get violence.
“The trick is to manage that violence and to have as much purposeful activity as you possibly can to keep prisoners busy.”
UK's prison crisis
- Britain’s prison population has risen by 93 per cent since 1990, according to Ministry of Justice data record high of nearly 88,000. The Ministry of Justice predicts it will rise to 99,300 by the end of next year
- Official data shows there is only capacity to house a further 1,411 prisoners.
- Currently, around 4,400 new spaces are planned – for an estimated 12,000 more prisoners.
- However the Prison Officers Association (POA) claims the number is far lower, at just 200.
- Prison officer numbers have fallen by 10 per cent since 2009 and lack of experience is also an issue.
- Half of prison staff have less than five years’ experience, more than double the number in 2009, according to the Institute for Government (IfG).
- Britain’s Victorian prisons are crumbling. In July 2023, prisons needed £1.4bn in urgent repair works, including urgent fire safety issues – a 56 per cent rise since 2019.
- Mark Fairhurst, chairman of the POA, said: “Conditions are as bad as they were in 1990 when Strangeways [prison, in Greater Manchester] started a wave of riots throughout the country. Except now we have got 4,000 fewer staff and double the amount of prisoners.
She is against arming officers with taser guns because there is a risk that inmates might grab them.
But Ian believes PAVA spray should be more readily available.
He concludes: “In young offender institutions, which have horrendous levels of violence, both prisoner on prisoner and prisoner on staff, there’s been huge dithering over the rollout of incapacitant spray.
“There is a question about the reluctance of people to join a job where they don’t feel that their management is serious about protecting them.
“I think officials are foot dragging because of the optics and they are supported by pressure groups, who really have never shown a particular interest in prison officer welfare.
“Of course if you don’t have safe prison officers you cannot have a hopeful environment where rehabilitation can take place.”