Liverpool prison is a symbol of our broken system. Send the inmates home | Simon Jenkins

The jail’s squalid conditions are shocking, reflecting the failure of the UK’s system as a whole. Do these prisoners really need to be locked up?

Prisons are Britain’s dirty little secret. Hospitals may be overcrowded, roads congested, teachers exhausted and students offended. These woes pale against the disgrace that is Britain’s prisons. The news that two long-serving workers at Liverpool jail have been sacked for complaining about conditions caps a litany of dire inspections of this establi...