Wandsworth governor is nearly jailed herself for sending released man back to prison
The governor at Wandsworth jail has narrowly avoided prison herself after being held in contempt of court for unlawfully detaining a man.
Katie Price was accused by a judge of a “lamentable series of failings” after failing to abide by his order to release the man by a fixed time.
Mr Justice Pepperall declined to punish her for contempt, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail, instead ordering her to pay the man’s legal costs on an indemnity basis, the highest level available.
Wandsworth prison in south London – from which Daniel Khalife, the terror suspect, allegedly escaped last year – was judged to be unsafe, understaffed and inhumane by watchdogs in October last year.
The independent monitoring board for the prison said staff shortages were so acute that the jail was failing to function effectively. Half of its staff were off sick or unavailable to work on any one day.
After Khalife’s alleged escape, Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, singled out Wandsworth as one of 10 Victorian jails that he said should ideally be closed because they were not fit for purpose.
Mr Khalife, 21, who was on remand at the jail charged with terror and spying offences, is accused of escaping by clinging to the bottom of a delivery van, prompting a four-day manhunt involving more than 150 police officers. Mr Khalife is awaiting trial, having denied all the charges, including escape.
The most recent case centres on Bumju Kim, a prisoner who was sentenced to 10 weeks in jail for battery on Jan 16 this year.
Having served that period on remand, he should then have been released. Instead, he was put on a prison bus and taken back to Wandsworth Prison, where he was detained.
Mr Justice Pepperall said: “There are few rights more important in a free and civilised democracy than that no one should be unlawfully detained by the state.
“The right not to be falsely imprisoned can be vindicated by the issue of the ancient writ of habeas corpus, which requires the detained person to be produced before the court.
“The law clearly places the onus on the state to justify the prisoner’s continued detention and, absent proof of lawful authority, the prisoner must be released.”
Kim’s solicitor tried to persuade the prison to release him, but failed to do so and applied to Mr Justice Pepperall, the overnight duty judge, who ordered Ms Price to bring Kim to court at 11am that morning unless the prisoner had been released by then.
When Ms Price failed to do so, the judge described it as an “unacceptably lax and disrespectful attitude to compliance with court orders”.
Giving judgment, Mr Justice Pepperall said: “It is neither lawful nor acceptable to detain prisoners for a further 24 hours after there ceases to be any lawful basis for their continued detention.”
It was the second time in little more than a year that a prisoner has been wrongly detained at Wandsworth. In November 2022, Walid Niagui was unlawfully detained for nearly three days in circumstances that Mr Justice Chamberlain said “continue to give serious cause for concern”.
In a judgment delivered later that month, Mr Justice Chamberlain added that the responses by prison staff “provide little reassurance that these events will not be repeated”.
