“How is it that in 18 months a prison which is supposedly being run under the auspices of a tightly managed contract, how has that been allowed to deteriorate?” chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke said yesterday morning when it was announced that the government would be making the “unprecedented step” of taking back control of HMP Birmingham from private firm G4S.

Mr Clarke's damning report does not paint a pretty picture of life at HMP Birmingham for inmates or staff - record violence, riots in 2016, huge drug problems and sleeping staff.

“Squalor, filth, the air hanging heavy with the smell of drugs, a dilapidated physical environment, a sense of great instability and a feeling that at any time violence could break out,” he said.

“This is the only jail – and I've visited many – where I personally was forced to leave a wing because of the effect the drugs were having on me.”

How can a prison deteriorate into such a state?

I don’t want to get into a debate about the ideology of privatisation but it seems that profits have continued to be privatised whereas failures, disasters and financial loss have been lumped onto the taxpayer and services have been re-nationalised when everything goes wrong.

With the Ministry of Justice’s budget cut by 30 per cent since 2010 and with prisons seemingly haemorrhaging staff, it is not only simple to see where the problem is stemming from but why staff are unable to maintain any control.

It is only right to admit that cuts have gone too far and that too many prison officers have gone from prisons as a result.

If the prisons are actually unsafe for officers that are meant to be running and in control of them, then something is obviously wrong and needs addressing.

The revelations of the "hell-hole" prison might be shocking but are hardly new. A report into the 2016 riot at HMP Birmingham said it should have been prevented and the riot stemmed from a loss of control by officers worn down by chronic staffing shortages and poor management decisions.

The lessons were not learnt then and it seems they are still not being learnt.