Director of jail in regime clampdown after rioting
BIRMINGHAM’S Winson Green prison is still too dangerous, too dirty and filled with too many prisoners on drugs.
That is the view of Richard Stedman, who took over as HMP Birmingham director two months ago.
In an interview with the Birmingham Post, he revealed there was still too much violence in the prison rocked by last year’s riot.
He has been forced to reduce the amount of time inmates are allowed out of cells with drugs and dealer debts, fuelling most of the problems
Mr Stedman, former director of HMP Rye Hill, near Rugby, said he had gone “absolutely back to basics” in the wake of riots that erupted in December.
During the disorder inmates built bonfires, pelted staff with missiles and paint, and used an injured prisoner as “bait” during 12 hours of disturbances.
In the aftermath of the riot, the prison shipped out nearly a third of its 1,450 prisoners.
Now, the G4S-operated prison is nearly back to full capacity after spending millions of pounds improving the wings and recruiting 30 new guards
Investigations by the Ministry of Justice about what happened at the category B prison are still ongoing, and eight people are currently facing prison mutiny charges for the disorder, which carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years.
“There is too much violence at Birmingham Prison,” Mr Stedman said. “We want prisons to be safe and ordered because safe and ordered prisons make for safe and ordered communities.
“I’m very clear about that, and I have been with the staff. I don’t think we should tolerate prisons being allowed to be violent places.
“That just means we put people back in the community who think that violence is okay.
“At the moment we have gone absolutely back to basics in terms of ensuring we have a controlled and ordered environment and where the consequences for prisoners around violent acts towards other prisoners and staff is consistent. If prisoners don’t see consistency, and a really robust push-back against violent behaviour, they will continue to be violent.
“We need to ensure that when staff are assaulted by prisoners they receive the parity they would get if they were assaulted in the community. I do not buy into the notion that if you come to work in a prison you should accept assault and violence.
“It’s still very early days. In May we started to see a slight reduction in violence, which is good, but it may be too early to read anything into that. We need to sustain it.”
Mr Stedman revealed he had been forced to reduce the time prisoners spend out of cells, a tactic he concedes is unpopular.
“We are taking regime time off prisoners,” he explained. “They are having less time out of cells because we are trying to make sure that everything we do is controlled, ordered and safe.
“One of the changes has been around the serving of lunch. You can have flashpoints as prisoners go through large communal areas. When I first came here that lunch service did not feel controlled enough. But that is starting to feel different now and we are seeing fewer alarm bells during lunch service.”
Mr Stedman described the issues around violence levels as complex, adding that New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) such as ‘mamba’ and ‘spice’ – formerly known as legal highs – are particularly problematic.
“Issues around drugs, and NPS in particular – and the debt associated with that – is feeding most of the issues we have with violence here,” he said.
“Gangs are also an issue in all local prisons, especially somewhere like Birmingham, where we have a large number of organised crime groups in the area. Inevitably, we will import some of the issues and behaviours from those groups.
“We have to work very hard to understand them in the first place, and to work out what it is we need to do to respond to that, and keep people safe. That’s a daily thread for us. The picture shifts all the time, and with the high rate of churn of prisoners it’s something you can’t take your eye off for a second.”