A high-ranking official in Britain's prison guards union said in a radio interview in April that the jails are so understaffed and poorly managed that in one (Everthorpe Prison, East Yorkshire), drug dealers actually put up ladders at night and come over the walls in order to sell drugs, and inmates routinely comment that drugs are easier to get inside than on the street.
The British government in January acknowledged that inmates in 2007 had been awarded the equivalent of over $250,000 in education "maintenance" grants, intended to provide such expenses as room and board for recipients of education loans. (The ministers said they would soon close that loophole.)
