Prisoners are tucking into smuggled fried chicken takeaways in their cells at scandal-hit HMP Wandsworth which accidentally released two men within days.
The south London prison faced embarassment after it released Algerian migrant sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif on October 29 and fraudster William Smith on November 3.
That came after a ‘catastrophic’ inspection which claimed the jail was in ‘chaos’ and inmates were in ‘greater despair’ than the Chief Inspector of Prisons had ever witnessed.
The category B Victorian prison also faced further humiliation when a video surfaced online showing married senior prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu having sex with an inmate in a cell last year.
Months earlier former soldier Daniel Khalife escaped from the prison by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck using a sling made from kitchen trousers.
Now criminals have been filmed dining on chicken wings and burgers in their cells at the crisis-stricken jail.
In one video, posted on TikTok, an inmate brazenly boasts about his takeway meal from Chicken Cottage.
In the now deleted footage, he brags about his wings and burger before turning the camera to show his cell door.
Prisoners are tucking into smuggled fried chicken takeaways in their cells at scandal-hit HMP Wandsworth which accidentally released two men within days
In one video, posted on TikTok, an inmate brazenly boasts about his takeway meal from Chicken Cottage
In the now deleted footage, he brags about his wings and burger before turning the camera to show his cell door
An investigation has been launched to track down the prisoner and those who brought in the food.
Bribed security guards could have helped smuggle the meal, while drones are increasingly flooding prisons with illicit items.
‘These are criminals who should be stripped of any luxury. Instead, they are getting favourite meals hand-delivered,’ a source told The Sun.
‘Prisoners can fork out hundreds for meals which would cost a fiver normally.
If prison officers are involved, it raises questions on the safety of an environment supposed to keep dangerous men locked up.’
TikTok has since deleted the user’s account.
The Ministry of Justice said: ‘We removed these posts immediately and are investigating. Those who break prison rules can face extra time behind bars.’
The overcrowded prison is regarded as one of the worst in the country.
Fraudster William ‘Billy’ Smith, 35, was accidentally released from HMP Wandsworth on November 3
The south London prison faced embarassement after it released Algerian migrant sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif on October 29 before he was rearrested
An inspection last year found failures in leadership ‘at every level’, with high rates of self-harm, dangerous levels of violence and drugs, severe overcrowding and appalling conditions.
It was condemned as ‘dangerously overcrowded’ and infested with vermin and found to be ‘not safe’.
Inspectors also found it was ‘alarmingly easy’ for prisoners to get hold of contraband with cell searches finding phones, drugs, makeshift weapons and alcohol – while the smell of cannabis was said to be ubiquitous.
A shortage of experienced staff – with almost half having been in their job for less than a year – ‘undermined attempts to make the prison run effectively’ and staff absence often reached 50 per cent, it said.
Last year two officers were dismissed after joking about a prisoner’s suicide on a staff WhatsApp group.
Meanwhile, inspectors cited ‘squalid, dirty and cramped’ living conditions in ‘crumbling’ cells, as well as ‘chaotic’ wings at the ‘dangerously-overcrowded and vermin-infested’ prison.
The report described Wandsworth as a ‘failing prison’ which was ‘constrained by staff absence and hindered by underfunding and lack of support from the prison service’.
And in November, one serving officer described the security as a ‘joke’.
The footage of the fried chicken takeaway comes after another video emerged showing a prison officer playing a football computer game with a criminal in his cell.
The category B Victorian prison also faced further humiliation when a video surfaced online showing married senior prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu having sex with an inmate in a cell last year
Former soldier Daniel Khalife escaped from the prison by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck using a sling made from kitchen trousers
The footage, believed to have been filmed on an illicit phone, shows inmates surrounding a television screen.
The guard’s colleague stands near the cell door before the gaming officer is seen quickly exiting alongside the caption: ‘He try run.’
The clip posted on TikTok has since been taken down. It is currently not known which prison it was filmed at, but the Ministry of Justice is investigating who posted it online.
Videos from inside prison appears frequently on social media even though prisoners are banned from keeping mobile phones.
In August, a prisoner posted footage online boasting about his luxurious life while behind bars.
The footage, understood to have been shared by an inmate at drugs-blighted HMP Maidstone, in Kent, the inmate repeatedly brags about his cushy life, showing off a range of luxury items inside a cell.
In one video, he films a TV screen with loud speakers playing and says: ‘Look at the speakers on the shelf, man.’
He then pans the camera around to show boiled eggs on a plate, a landline phone above the bed and a Big Ben model clock he has built.
Former prison guard Lee Davies told the Daily Mail at the time that ‘phones are absolutely rife’ in jails across the country.
He added: ‘Phones obviously to people outside can seem fairly trivial if someone’s just putting videos on TikTok but the sinister side of it is crime is carried on. Crime is orchestrated from prison cells.
‘There are phones literally everywhere.’
