Maghaberry Prison: Brutal assessment highlights huge challenge ahead

The report on Maghaberry Prison by far the most critical ever published about a Northern Ireland prison.

Reports criticising conditions within prisons in Northern Ireland are nothing new.

But this one is in a different league. It is by far the most critical ever published.

A prison described by the government's chief inspector of prisons as the most dangerous he has ever set foot in.

Unsafe, unstable, and in a state of crisis.

That is a brutal assessment.

Those who carried out the inspection were horrified by much of what they found.

Northern Ireland's Prison Service and Department of Justice were shocked by their findings and the extent of their criticism.

That sense of shock was deepened by the fact that Maghaberry was supposed to be on the road to recovery.

Six years ago, an inspection report delivered another damning indictment, describing the prison as the most expensive and one of the worst performing in the UK.

Three years later inspectors spoke of significant progress.

They referred to "green shoots of recovery".

But those green shoots have been decimated. On Thursday, inspectors said the situation within Maghaberry is worse than it has ever been.

The person in ultimate control of Maghaberry is the director general of the Prison Service, Sue McAllister.

She came out of retirement to take up the challenge in May 2012.

She was the first woman to hold the most senior position within a prison service anywhere in the UK.

At the time of her appointment she said: "I do not underestimate the scale of the reform programme that will be delivered over the next few years, one of the most challenging undertaken by the public sector anywhere in the United Kingdom."

The size of that challenge has just become much, much bigger.