Strangeways Prison riot
25-day prison riot and rooftop protest at Strangeways Prison
The 1990 Strangeways Prison riot was a 25-day prison riot and rooftop protest at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England. The riot began on 1 April 1990 when prisoners took control of the prison chapel, and quickly spread throughout most of the prison. The incident ended on 25 April when the final five prisoners were removed from the rooftop. One prisoner was killed during the riot, and 147 prison officers and 47 prisoners were injured. Much of the prison was damaged or destroyed, with the cost of repairs coming to £55 million (equivalent to £136 million in 2025). It was the longest prison riot in British penal history.
The riot was followed by a series of disturbances in prisons across England, Scotland and Wales, resulting in the British government announcing a public inquiry into the riots headed by Lord Woolf. The resulting Woolf Report concluded that conditions in the prison had been intolerable, and recommended major reform of the UK prison system. The Guardian described the report as a blueprint for the restoration of "decency and justice into jails where conditions had become intolerable".
Background
Strangeways Prison, which opened in Manchester in 1868, was a "local prison" designed to hold prisoners from the surrounding area, mainly those on remand or serving sentences of less than five years.
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This entry incorporates text from “Strangeways Prison riot” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.