Few people will envy Steve Rodford, the new governor of Maghaberry Prison, his job.

He was appointed to the post after the previous governor and his deputy were removed from their positions following the death of an inmate who hanged himself while supposedly being closely supervised.

Mr Rodford took up his post on Monday and yesterday heard the prison described as one of the worst in the UK. He is the man who will have to redress what a team of inspectors drawn from the Criminal Justice Inspection NI and HM Inspectorate of Prisons described as “serious operational difficulties”.

The team’s report paints a damning picture of the jail, which is Northern Ireland’s most modern prison. It is one of three out of 169 inspected which was “particularly poor” in the area of safety. It received a similar rating in the area of providing prisoners with purposeful activity and was “not performing sufficiently well” in areas of respect for prisoners and resettlement. These are quite coy official terms, but they are an unmistakable indictment.

Admittedly there are difficulties. The prison houses a very mixed population, from fine defaulters to murderers, but it has an ethos more reminiscent of past prison practices than what is expected of a modern jail. Someone in jail for a very minor offence such as failure to pay a fine is subjected to the same maximum security regime as a murderer. That is not acceptable practice.

Also unacceptable was the rather limp response of Prisons Minister Paul Goggins to the report. He voiced “disappointment” at the findings and said he had told the new governor that there has to be a step-change in the way services are delivered at the jail. He should not be disappointed at the findings; he should be appalled, if not outraged.

And he should be ashamed. For after a previous inspection at the jail in 2006, a total of 155 recommendations to improve services were made. Since then more than half have not been achieved.

This latest report says that the current position at Maghaberry cannot continue. It makes 200 recommendations, more than 70 of them repeated from 2006. Eleven of these recommendations require urgent action. Can we really have any confidence that they will be implemented given the past record? While many people care little of what happens to prisoners once the cell doors slam shut, it is not acceptable that their safety is jeopardised while in prison, or that they are not treated with due respect or given some opportunity to change their lives and become better citizens when released.

The Prison Service cannot claim that lack of funding is hampering reform. It costs on average £81,500 to keep a prisoner in Maghaberry for a year, making it one of the UK’s most expensive jails to run.

Compare that to the average annual cost of keeping a prisoner in a Scottish jail of just over £32,300. The figure was for the period 2007/8 but shows an alarming gap between the cost of the two regimes. It is obvious from yesterday’s report that taxpayers are getting a very poor return for their investment in Maghaberry. That must change, and quickly.