IT’S THE Dorset prison which hit the headlines this week after staff found stashes of drugs and mobile phones inside the bodies of dead rats thrown over the perimeter fence.

But just what is HMP Guys Marsh, the establishment buried in some of Dorset's poshest countryside near Shaftesbury, and how does it compare to the county's other prisons?

According to the government’s own website, HMP Guys Marsh is a category C ‘training’ prison, meaning its inmates are not suitable for an open prison and may have committed crimes of violence or threat. Opened in 1960 as a borstal, Guys Marsh became a young offender's institution in 1984, becoming a closed establishment with around 550 prisoners now.

According to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in 2014, staff at the isolated institution had ‘all but lost control’. Despite a six-month notice period, a follow-up inspection in 2017 found matters had barely improved.

“For example, prisoners walked around in their dressing gowns or just shorts, smoked outside their cell, pushed ahead and received extra food in dinner queues and displayed intimidatory behaviour in medicine queues without being challenged by staff,” said the report.

In recent years the prison has seen rooftop protests, images on social media of partying inmates, and complaints of ‘serious’ violence.

Things appear to be little better at HMP/YOI Portland where the Independent Monitoring Board found last year that inmates were suffering ‘inhumane conditions’.

Originally built in 1848 to hold convict prisoners, HMP Portland now houses around 500 male adult and young offenders aged 18 and over.

In the report, IMB inspectors branded cell conditions for many prisoners as 'insanitary and inhumane' due to the lack of maintenance work. It also flagged up a lack of provision to deal with the entry of drugs and other illicit substances which were causing 'serious disruptions and risks to the health and well-being of staff and prisoners'.

Dorset’s third prison is also on Portland. But HMP The Verne, a citadel actually built by convicts and previously used as an immigration detention centre, has quietly become one of the UK’s prisons dedicated solely to sex offenders. At capacity it will hold 580 men convicted of sexual offences.

One of its current inmates is said to be Gary Glitter, the paedophile rock singer who was jailed in 2015 for 16 years for sexually abusing three young girls between 1975 and 1980.

The Sun newspaper described the Verne as a "cushy prison" and quoted a source claiming it is "like a holiday camp".

According to the paper, the inmates at the Verne have 20-inch flatscreen TVs and tea making facilities in their own cells and are allowed to walk freely around their wing, 24-hours-a-day.