NO ESCAPING JAIL PROBLEMS
IT’S NO secret that conditions in Britain’s prisons are terrible. Every few weeks, an official report makes a damning assessment about yet another jail, following years of overcrowding and understaffing.
HMP Nottingham is so “dangerous, disrespectful, drug-ridden” that Peter Clarke, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, believes it may have been the cause of suicides. Bedford’s jail, the scene of a riot last year, has been placed in special measures. Leeds is classed as unsafe and Liverpool has been branded by assessors as the “worst they have ever seen”.
The Justice Secretary, David Gauke, has admitted drugs are being “ordered with a Deliveroo-style responsiveness” by prisoners, while violent attacks have hit record levels in cells and corridors across England and Wales.
Many people will have little sympathy for criminals while funding for the NHS and schools is also under pressure – even if it’s argued that bad conditions harm any hope of rehabilitation and cutting crime. But what about the wellbeing of prison officers who the justice system relies upon to deal with ever more shocking incidents?
For ten years, Neil Samworth worked at the infamous Strangeways highsecurity prison, officially known as HMP Manchester and described by the Independent Monitoring Board last year as a “squalid, vermin-infested, damp environment more reminiscent of Dickensian England”.
These reports often highlight the state of the buildings, but Samworth – who grew up in Sheffield before embarking in a career that saw him handle psychopaths and murderers, and left him suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder – says this is a relatively small worry.
“Prisoners are not concerned about their environment,” he says. “They might complain about a dirty cell, but when prisoners are climbing on roofs and barricading and rioting about ‘conditions’, they’re annoyed about being locked up all day. Simple as that.”
“Thirty years ago,” he explains, “prisoners were locked up 23 hours a day. It didn’t work. There was lots of animosity.” Following the Strangeways riot in 1990, when hundreds of prisoners rebelled and caused a 25day siege, facilities were updated and inmates began to be allowed out of cells for longer periods to ease tensions. However, Samworth – the 55-yearold author of – says austerity cuts meant a return to the bad old days. “We’ve given the prison population time out, saying you can visit your loved ones, go out on exercise and things like that, a bit of gym. But now there’s not enough staff to provide that, so we’re locking them up again. They’re getting angry and frustrated. At some point you have to unlock them to serve meals, and that’s when it’s going to boil over.
“You need to enough staff to run the prisons and deal with incidents – that’s where it’s falling down.”
Some people believe that life is too easy in prison for inmates, but Samworth denies this. “People get really upset by prisoners having TVs,” he says. “I can understand where people are coming from, but prison officers are normal people – they’re not all big tough guys – and they’ve got to manage a prison population. If you lock them up 23 hours a day they’re either going to go barmy or attack people.
“What should be happening is we provide purposeful activity.
“Every prisoner, when they come into prison, gets a TV. That’s the standard regime. If they behave really well, at some point they can get put up to an enhanced regime, which means their family can send them more money, they can get more visits, and they can apply to have a PlayStation.
“They may use the PlayStations for a couple of hours at weekends, but they’re not on them 24 hours a day, feet up, eating chocolate.”
The number of prison officers, governors and support staff in public sector jails fell by 10,000 between 2010 and 2013, and numbers are not much higher now despite subsequent recruitment. Admittedly, things were far from perfect before the cuts. After working first at a secure mental health unit and then at the privatelyrun Forest Bank prison in Salford, Samworth was recruited to HMP Manchester in 2005, and moved into its healthcare unit three years later, dealing with drug addicts and the mentally-ill.
Samworth describes himself as a “gobby” Yorkshireman and is no wallflower, but the traumas affected him. “The writing of the book made me quite ill,” he admits, as it led him to remember more “horrendous” incidents such as “people self-harming and setting themselves on fire”, but he remained determined. “I’ve still got mates who work there and it’s in a shambles, I wanted a chance to tell people what it’s like.”
Hard as things were, Samworth found fulfilment in the job and enjoyed working with his colleagues until the effects of cuts finally began to take hold at Strangeways in 2015. As officers became overstretched, their relationships with the prisoners – vital to maintaining discipline and looking out for more vulnerable inmates – began to break down. Staff left and were not replaced, meaning those remaining were doing more overtime, working up to 70 hours a week.
His work as a prison officer served as a window into the lives of some of the country’s most vulnerable people, who have ended up as criminals after troubled backgrounds involving being abused as children and untreated mental illness.
He writes in his book: “I’m no angel, me. No Yorkshire martyr.” But gradually, things became too much. His mental health was deteriorating and he suffered from nightmares.
One day a prisoner attacked two of Samworth’s colleagues and he responded by punching and breaking the inmate’s nose. He admits he was lucky to escape an assault charge, but soon afterwards he was signed off with a shoulder injury – and then was diagnosed with PTSD. Soon after, one of his colleagues died of a stroke just after retiring aged 56, and Samworth feared he was heading the same way.
His mental condition affected relationship with his fiancée, Amy, and his 11-year-old daughter, Billie. But Samworth, who has received psychological treatment, believes his book’s publication – and a recent TV deal – will help him and his family. “It’s just over two and a half years since my last shift, and it’s only in the last month that I’ve started feeling myself again.”
Measures to reduce violence and the smuggling of drugs, phones and weapons in jails were been outlined by Justice Secretary in March, while the Government has hit its target of recruiting 2,500 prison officers by the end of the year. For the sake of his former colleagues, Samworth hopes more will follow and things can yet be turned around.
by Neil Samworth (Sidgwick & Jackson, £14.99) is out now