Prison could call sex offenders ‘residents’

A PRISON has offered sex offenders the chance to decide if they want to be called “residents” rather than inmates.

Olivia Phelps, governor of HMP Littlehey, said that she was launching a consultation with prisoners to decide how they should be collectively described.

It is believed to be the first time UK prisoners have been consulted on the issue. There is no national policy on what prisoners should be called, with Prison Service bosses saying it was left to governors at the 135 jails around the UK to make decisions at a “local level”.

Ms Phelps announced the review after responding to an inmate at her jail who wrote to the prison magazine Inside Time.

Writing from his cell at HMP Littlehey, a 1,200-capacity jail in Cambridgeshire, the largest sex offender prison in the UK, the inmate who sparked the consultation stated: “We were informed in the past that we are to refer to each other as ‘inmates’, then it changed to ‘residents’.”

He said, however, that one prison officer got “quite aggressive” with him when he called other inmates “residents”, saying: “He told me we are prisoners and not residents.”

A week later, he was “told off again” by a prison guard, this time after “referring to someone as a prisoner”, saying he should call inmates “residents”.

Governor Phelps wrote in reply: “I will be consulting with both residents and staff on this issue as HMPPS [Prison and Probation Service] frameworks refer to people in custody as prisoners as do the media and I can understand why there is some confusion.

“Following this consultation, we will make a decision [on] which term we will use based on the feedback, as it is right that we listen to and respect people’s views. This will be communicated across the establishment to avoid any further confusion.”

Many prison reports from the Independent Monitoring Board refer to inmates as “residents” and to cells as “rooms”, with some jails even ordering staff to call prisoners by their first names rather than their surnames.

A spokesman for the Prison Service said there was “flexibility” for governors to decide at a “local level” what to call people behind bars.