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 not down to the prison department. But for the riot, we would still be in the same old jail banged up all day and slopping out ... The rioters brought this about. These conditions ... should not have cost the lives of a prisoner, a prison officer and two huge court trials. They should have done it years ago but it took a riot to get them to do it. "Slopping out" was abolished in England and Wales by 1996, and was scheduled to be abolished in Scotland by 1999. Due to budget restraints the abolishment was delayed, and by