Senior staff at Britain's largest youth jail have been strongly criticised in a report published today into the murder of an Asian teenager by his racist, psychopathic cellmate.
Zahid Mubarek (19) - a first-time offender sentenced to three months for theft - was due for release on the day he was killed at Feltham jail in March 2000 by certified psychopath Robert Stewart.
The report by judge Mr Justice Keith singled out 19 members of the prison service for criticism, listing 186 failings and recommending an end to cell sharing.
Mr Mubarek's family told reporters after the report's release the death of their son had been "institutionalised murder."
"The Prison Service had 15 chances to save Zahid from his killer - it missed them all," said Dexter Dias, one of the family's lawyers.
Then governor Niall Clifford had also failed in his management of staff, it added.
Justice Keith's inquiry had heard allegations that staff at the jail southwest of London had deliberately placed likely antagonists in cells together and had laid bets on the outcome.
"The real possibility that unsuitable prisoners have at times been put into the same cell - either to wind them up so that they would misbehave when they were let out or to see whether they would argue with each other - is certainly one which cannot be excluded, even though no hard and fast examples of such a practice have been given," the report said.
The report said John Byrd, a deputy governor of Feltham, was "singularly ineffective" in his role as race relations liaison officer.
It urged the government to put more money into prisons, as many of the problems at Feltham, it said, were due to serious lack of resources.
"The history of Stewart's management within the prison system before he went to Feltham for the last time reveals a number of missed opportunities," it said.
"It is easy to be wise after the event, but by the summer of 1998, Stewart should have stood out from the crowd.
"We can only speculate about what would have happened if Stewart's potential dangerousness had been properly addressed."
The judge said the Home Office and Prison Service should introduce a new concept of "institutional religious intolerance" to help combat prejudice against Muslim inmates.
The inquiry was announced in April 2004 after Mubarek's family won a House of Lords ruling in favour of an independent public investigation into the murder.