All the mod cons for the cons at ‘super prison’
BRITAIN’S biggest jail, where prisoners will be called “men” rather than “offenders” and the governor insists that the rooms are not cells, has started welcoming inmates.
Criminals arriving at HMP Berwyn in Wrexham will find a computer, television and phone in their en-suite rooms and be able to use the all-weather football pitch and gyms when not in classes.
Prison officers will have to knock before entering the rooms, and will not refer to “offenders” in the hope it will prevent inmates living up to the label. Governor Russ Trent has said he wants the facility to be “truly rehabilitative”, but critics have questioned whether its ethos is too soft.
Nick Dann, the prison’s deputy project director, rejects such suggestions. “They are not prisoners, they are men. If you keep calling someone an offender or ex-offender, that’s how they will act,” he said. “If they start off with the mindset that this does not feel like a prison, we are hoping they will act like it is not a prison as well.”
Costing £250 million to build, the Category C prison can hold up to 2,100 inmates, making it the biggest in Brit- ain and one of the biggest prisons in Europe. It is the first in a series of new “super-prisons” to open its doors and was last month held up as an exampleby Liz Truss, the Justice Secretary, of proof the system is being modernised.
Mr Trent, a former Royal Marine who was seen as a trouble shooter, has said the facility will be run on “Mandela rules”, a United Nations standard aimed at making life in prison as similar as possible to life on the outside.
Therefore the inmates, who started arriving on Tuesday, will have rooms kitted out with technology to make their lives as “normal” as possible. Lap- tops will not have access to the internet, but will be used by the men to arrange visits, order meals and do their weekly shopping, as well as complete work related to their studies. They will have phones in their rooms to call approved numbers “so they can ring their children at night and say goodnight”.
Philip Davies, a Tory MP who sits on the justice committee, has warned that such perks send a “terrible message”, adding that the inmates have “creature comforts that many of my constituents could not afford”. Only one block is currently operational, with the rest to open in May and late July.