I just cannot realise why the Government still gives contracts to G4S.

In a recent report to the Ministry of Justice, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, wrote that his team had found that prisoners at HMP Birmingham “were easily gaining access to alcohol and drugs and certain areas of the jail were littered with cockroaches, with blood and vomit being left uncleaned”.

His report also stated there had been an “abject failure of contract management” and that some members of G4S prison staff had reportedly locked themselves in their own offices to gain a place of safety.

No animal welfare organisation would be allowed to treat creatures in such appalling conditions, but evidently the Tory government have allowed contracts to be awarded to G4S who appear to have deemed it to be OK to allow prisoners to live in such deplorable conditions.

In the same report, Mr Clarke described the situation at HMS Birmingham as requiring an “urgent and pressing need to address the squalor, violence, prevalence of drugs and looming lack of control”.

Whatever some readers may think, if, as a society, we expect prisoners to be released as reformed characters, we must surely treat them with some type of dignity while they are serving their sentences.

Howard Perry,

St James Place,

Dringhouses, York