PRISONERS are “effectively in control” of HMP Bedford, where violence has risen “significantly,” drugs are “easily available” and both staff and inmates feel unsafe, the prisons watchdog said today.

A recent unannounced visit to the jail found an “unchecked decline in standards” since the last inspection in 2016, forcing Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke to invoke the urgent notification protocol at a fourth jail in nine months.

Mr Clarke wrote to Justice Secretary David Gauke of his “great concern that for seven years the prison has been on a path of seemingly inexorable decline.”