WANDSWORTH Prison is “unsafe and inhumane,” but the conditions are “by no means unique,” the head of a monitoring scheme said today.

Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB) national chairwoman Elisabeth Davies revealed that more than half of recent escapes have been from local prisons — where inmates are sent first.

An IMB report painted a bleak picture of conditions at the south-west London prison, from which former soldier Daniel Khalife allegedly escaped last month, with 1,584 inmates held in a building designed for 961.