1990 Strangeways Prison riot with many excerpts from the letters being appended to the finished report. The "Woolf Report" was published on 25 February 1991, and blamed the loss of control of the prison on the prison officers abandoning the gates outside the chapel, which "effectively handed the prison to the prisoners". Woolf described the conditions inside Strangeways in the months leading up to the riot as "intolerable", and viewed a "combination of errors" by staff and management at the prison and Prison Service as a central contributing factor to the riot. He also blamed the failure of successive governments to "provide the resources
1990 Strangeways Prison riot reforms, Baker also proposed the introduction of a new offence of "prison mutiny" carrying a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment, stating "The events of last April marked a watershed in the history of prison service. We cannot, and will not, tolerate the savagery and vandalism in our prisons that we saw then". The first prosecutions in relation to the riot began at Manchester Crown Court on 14 January 1992. The trial was conducted amid tight security, including armed police patrolling the area around the court, body searches for spectators and a specially constructed dock with sides made from bulletproof