But claims the practice has allegedly been employed to remove problem prisoners before inspections is a new and serious development that threatens to plunge the Prison into crisis, especially if it triggers further suggestions that the practice is widespread.
Such is the sensitivity over what is involved, there is a news blackout on the inquiry's progress. Straw simply says: "The investigation is due to report in October, at which time I will a further statement."
Adding a further, troubling dimension to the situation is the tragic story of Christopher Wardally. During the time of the alleged transfers, Wardally was a suicidal 25-year-old prisoner serving four years for robbery. Although he was not considered a difficult prisoner – and was not one of those allegedly transferred to evade the scrutiny of the inspectors – he still ended up being shuttled between Wandsworth and Pentonville, for reasons that are unclear.
After being transferred back to Pentonville, a prison where he had previously attempted to take his life, he was returned to Wandsworth, where a day later he was found dead, hanging in his cell. An inquest has yet to determine the cause of death.
It is no surprise, then, that some in the Prison Service predict the eventual outcome from the mounting number of inquiries, inquests, investigations, disciplinary hearings and official reports into what happened at Pentonville and Wandsworth will be "akin to another Strangeways", a reference to the Manchester prison's riots of 1990 that triggered the Woolf inquiry and ushered in sweeping changes to the prison regime.
Woolf's inquiry prison overcrowding, stretched and prisoners' living conditions – all issues that penal experts agree remain extremely pertinent today. But the latest row to engulf the prison service has also raised questions about the pressures public-sector staff under to meet exacting government targets.
In private, prison governors are highly critical of the pearl jewelry number of inspections and audits they must undergo on an annual basis. One governor of a large London prison said his institution had been subject to 15 audits or inspections during the past three and a half years.
Much is at stake: a negative inspection can lead to the removal of a governor and their jail being demoted in the Prison Service performance league tables. At a time of low morale in the Prison Service, this can have a further debilitating effect on staff.
Unions complain the massive apparatus charged with running the country's jails – the National Offender Management Service, staffed by 4,000 civil servants – drowns the service's employees in bureaucracy, with the result that they are continuously focused on hitting targets at the expense of everything else.
There are unsubstantiated claims that mandatory drug-testing figures are being doctored and that regime activities are being exaggerated, in order to obtain positive inspection results. This, some argue, is what inevitably happens in a "target culture".
"The alleged transfer out of prisoners before an inspection is clearly regrettable but is understandable given the pressure that prisons are under to produce excellent results, inspection after inspection after audit," said Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation officers' union, Napo. Fletcher called for an independent into the use of targets by the Prison Service, claiming it has "far too much centralised, repetitive, bureaucracy".
Questions will inevitably be asked about whether other prisons may have been swapping inmates to achieve better inspection results. Prisoner support groups point out that biwa pearl Wandsworth is considered one of the country's best-run jails. They say if it could happen there, where else?
The annual report of the prison's independent monitoring board (IMB), published this month, pays tribute to the hard work of its former governor, Ian Mulholland, who has recently been promoted within the Prison Service. The IMB declared Wandsworth had "moved from being a hard-nosed repository to an institution where staff have pride in coming to work and treating prisoners fairly and with respect".
Mulholland's opposite number at Pentonville, Nick Leader, who has also just been promoted, is considered a progressive, highly popular governor, too, despite taking over an institution that was described by its IMB report in 2007 as suffering "endemic squalor and poverty of regime which ought to be a matter of deep shame to government in 21st-century Britain". Both men will inevitably now face questions as to what they knew about the recent transfer of prisoners between their jails.
The imminent publication of Owers's reports and the inquiry's findings come at a tense time for the Prison Service. A record prison population has led to chronic overcrowding within the UK's jails while budget constraints have resulted in prisoners being locked up in their cells for longer. Unions warn such actions will lead to a rise in disturbances within prisons. Paul Tidball, chairman of the Prison Governors Association, recently observed: "For prisons to become less effective in reducing offending is tragic enough, and against the interests of our society and the taxpayer, but the potential catastrophe of widespread disorder resulting from foolhardy cuts takes the debate to another level."
His warning comes amid heightened concerns about security at some of the country's seemingly most secure jails. This year alone, a prisoner escaped from Pentonville by concealing himself under a van while two inmates swapped identities at Brixton, allowing one to flee. Another prisoner disappeared in Holloway for a whole weekend by hiding in a cupboard, while a convicted offender was sprung by accomplices from a prison van leaving Feltham, having arranged for his escape on a mobile phone. In addition, a visitor was shot dead in the car park outside Wandsworth prison during the summer.
Security inside the prisons is also being questioned. The akoya pearl widespread trade in drugs and mobile phones behind bars is said to be endemic, while the Serious and Organised Crime Agency has warned that criminal gang bosses are running their empires from behind bars. Corrupt practices by a small number of prison staff raise repeated concerns about the service's ability to investigate its employees. Islamist prisoners sympathetic to al-Qaeda have been the target, and the cause, of major prison disturbances.
Given such pressures, adequate scrutiny of Britain's jails is paramount, say experts. "The integrity of the prison service and the independence of our prisons inspectorate are respected worldwide, so any action that could lead to prisoners being used as pawns in a game to undermine these institutions must be thoroughly investigated," said Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust.
Straw's statement to the Observer said: "The chief inspector will make her own judgments in her inspection reports on the prisons, due for release shortly, but it is neither policy nor acceptable practice temporarily to move prisoners during inspections."
Some observers believe the widely respected Owers has become frustrated by the amount of attention the prison service pays to her reports. This is unlikely to be a concern come Tuesday.
