Police have restored order after at least four wings of a jail in central England were taken over by inmates. Prisoners have told local media that prison conditions are worsening due to government cuts.
Image: Reuters/P.Nicholls
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Security officers were able to restore order late Friday after the city of Birmingham, England, saw the UK's worst prison rioting since 1990. Prison officials had called in a specialist "Tornado Team," which is trained to deal with prison riots, as the "disturbance" worsened on Friday afternoon.
The trouble erupted at the privately run prison in Birmingham shortly after 09:00 UTC on Friday, forcing staff to withdraw.
Security firm G4S, which runs the 1,450-inmate facility, said in a statement posted to social media that the incident had spread from two to four wings during the day.
Riot teams placed the affected areas in lockdown, and G4S said that due to the severity of the incident, the Prison Service had taken charge of the operation. A spokesman for G4S said all its staff has been accounted for.
Sky News television reported late on Friday that as many as 600 inmates had been involved but that the situation had been brought under control,
Prisoners angry at conditions
Within a few hours of the disturbance beginning, several inmates had called local media to complain about conditions inside the Victorian-era jail, built in 1849.
Prisoners said a lack of staff, poor healthcare and nutrition and being forced to remain in cells all day as factors that led to the trouble.
Local media reported that trouble flared when a security guard was threatened with a syringe by one inmate while another took his keys.
"It's understood a set of keys giving access to residential areas was taken from an officer and that offenders have since occupied some blocks and exercise facilities," police said in statement.
Riot police were deployed to the privately-run prison in Birmingham, EnglandImage: Reuters/P. Nicholls
System trouble
The latest disturbance is the third in English prisons in less than two months.
In November. around 200 prisoners went on the rampage at another jail in central England; the previous month a jail in southeastern England was the scene of a six-hour standoff between inmates and riot officers.
Britain's largest prisons union, the Prison Officers Association (POA), said the latest incident was a "stark warning to the Ministry of Justice that the prison service is in crisis."
The Prison Governors' Association (PGA) said jails were in a parlous state because of a decline in pay and the cutting of staff numbers.
In November, thousands of prisonofficers in England and Wales walked out in protest at rising levels of jail violence and concerns about the health and safety of staff and inmates.
Prison officials take control
"The situation is contained, the perimeter is secure and there is no risk to the public," the Ministry of Justice said in a statement on Friday evening.
"We are absolutely clear that prisoners who behave in this way will be punished and could spend significantly longer behind bars."
After the incident was resolved, Justice Minister Liz Truss vowed that the cause of the riots would be fully investigated. "Violence in our prisons will not be tolerated and those responsible will face the full force of the law," she said.
British authorities said that the 13-hour takeover of HMP Birmingham was the worst prison riot since the 25-day long uprising at Strangeways in Manchester in 1990, which left one prisoner dead.
Spectacular prison breaks
Mexican drug baron "Shorty" Guzman is not the first prisoner to want to escape the thick walls, bars, guards and search lights of jail. Here are some of the most spectacular, if not always successful, prison breaks.
Image: Getty Images/New York State Governor's Office/D. McGee
Maximum security in Mexico
In July 2015, Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped the Altiplano prison through a tunnel under his cell's shower - the second time in 14 years that he managed to flee a maximum-security prison. Guards discovered a deep hole with a ladder that led to a tunnel that in turn led to a building on a hill surrounded by pastures.
Image: Reuters/PGR/Attorney General's Office
Nice try
Not as clever as Guzman: In 2011, the wife of inmate Juan Ramirez Tijerina visited her husband in a Mexican prison, where he was serving a sentence for illegal weapons possession. She brought along a large suitcase she planned to lug him out with again. Prison guards, however, found the young man inside - curled up inside in the fetal position.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sspqr
H-Block 7
In 1983, 38 Irish Republican Army (IRA) inmates broke out of The Maze, considered to be one of Europe's most escape-proof prisons. The Maze was the main prison in Northern Ireland for sentenced republican and loyalist paramilitaries. The inmates used smuggled guns and knives to overpower staff, and hijacked a kitchen van to drive to the main gate, and out of the compound.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Mcerlane
The Alcatraz escape
With the help of sharpened spoons and an improvised drill, three bank robbers managed to burrow their way out of their cells in Alcatraz high security prison in the San Francisco Bay in 1962. To fool the prison guards at bay, the trio placed dummy heads in their beds. Once they were out, they used an inflatable raft made out of raincoats - and vanished.
Image: imago/Kai Koehler
Daring flight
It sounds like a script for Hollywood blockbuster: Pascal Payet twice used helicopters for his dramatic prison breaks. In 2001, the convicted murderer fled from a prison in a French village using a hijacked helicopter. In 2007, he again used a helicopter for a get-away. Previously, he had helped organize the escape of three captives who had been in jail with him - again using a helicopter.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/B. Horvat
Most wanted fugitive
Awaiting trial, serial killer Theodore Robert Bundy escaped from a county law library by jumping from a window. Re-arrested and sent to jail in Colorado, Bundy lost 30 pounds so he could escape again through a small light fixture hole in the cell ceiling. Bundy spread terror across the US, killing numerous women between January 1974 and 1978, when he was finally recaptured and sentenced to death.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
An Easter escape
Inmate Walter Stürm, imprisoned for stealing offenses, left a smug note in his cell after his get-away from a Swiss prison in 1981. "Off hunting Easter eggs," the note read. Stürm had sawed through the bars on his window, let himself down to the ground to the prison yard and fled to freedom by using a ladder. It was his third prison break.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Busting out
In June 2015, two convicted murderers, David Sweat and Richard Matt, broke out of a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, cutting holes in the walls of their adjoining cells, and working their way through a maze of catwalks and pipes to emerge from a manhole. The duo did a practice run the night before the escape. Matt was later killed by police, while Sweat was recaptured, badly injured.
Image: Getty Images/New York State Governor's Office/D. McGee
