Written evidence from a serving prisoner, HMP Holme House
I read with interest your interview in the prisoner newspaper lnside Times where you stated your desire to hold the Ministry of Justice accountable for the prison system. Can l give some insight based on my so far 5 years in jail? I hope you'll see this as honest non-agenda driven evidence from the trenches, untainted by being filtered by the prison Governor or any prison charity. lf you use this material I ask that you do not use my full name as the possible publicity could be harmful to my family. **.
A quick background, I pleaded guilty in 2011 to sexual offences against a 12 year old boy and was sentenced to 12 years and 5 years on extended licence. I have been in Leeds, Pentonville, Wakefield, Northumberland and now Holme House jail. I am a 51 year old male, degree educated, worked professionally all my life, lived in several countries, was married, have 3 children, now come out as gay. In April 2017 I am due for release and will live in North Yorkshire on licence. This is my first offence. I feel terrible about what I did, and am determined to not reoffend and not come back to jail for recall or new offences. My entire time has been on VP wings, l've never been on the mains where I think a lot of the violence and disorder is.
I‘m listing my observations as individual bullet points, there are so many things to say about the English and Welsh prison system but l'm sure you get lots of polished reports from people more educated than I. I want to share ground floor observations that demonstrate exactly how far from fit for purpose our prison system is.
An officer once told me their motto "The day I joined the Prison Service is the day that l retired.“ l think this says it all. I see the news coverage about staff numbers but really there's plenty of staff. They spend all day huddled with each other avoiding prisoners, as we inevitably ask for something "can I have some soap Gov?" "has my job app been approved yet Gov" etc etc. NOMS is much like British Rail in the 1970's, run by the staff for the staff. Don't get me wrong, individually prison officers are wonderful people but they've given up. Any buzz they bring to the job when they start is squashed out of them within 6 months, replaced by general lethargy. The only way to change this would be to put 20% of their wages dependent on reducing reoffending. Until then rehabilitation is a far off dream to them. Do turkeys vote for Christmas? Their jobs depend on criminals committing crime. ln my 5 years inside l've had one decent 30 minute conversation with an officer, once, and other than that it has been short sentences only. On the hour a day we have on association the two officers assigned to our wing sit together in low chairs nattering about holidays and caravans, ignoring the 100 or so prisoners. My idea - separate them and put them behind a desk so we can talk to them adult to adult without feeling we're interrupting.
I enclose a leaflet that describes the Holme House Houseblock 6 therapeutic community (not printed). Shouldn't all prison wings/houseblocks be run on these lines? I see so many damaged socially isolated people that never get any help moving forward and addressing their demons. They leave in exactly the same shape as they entered.
I was doubled up in Leeds with a man of 50. We got talking, he had been released from prison the week before for the 20th time. He was put in a flat with no furniture and had no friends or family in a part of town where he knew no-one. His £50/week either went on food or heating, he could have one or the other but not both. He was lonely and isolated. He set fire to the kitchen. Fire brigade came and went. That afternoon he sat fire to the kitchen again. Fire brigade asked what the deal was and he said he wanted to go back to the prison. They called the police, he got nicked for arson and got 5 years. I left the cell soon after as he was smoker, but every time I walked past his cell he was laughing and joking and playing cards and smoking with a few matesl Prison honestly was a better proposition for him than outside. This isn't prison's fault, it's outsides fault.
Sex offenders, we're all kept together on the same wings and work details for our protection from the mains prisoners. I appreciate this protection, but would you put the arsonsists together, or the wife beaters or the car thieves? lt's not really very sensible in terms of rehabiliatation and desistance from offending beliefs.
Prisons are quite rightly single sex, the tensions from a mixed male/female prison wing would be unbearable. A recent survey said 50% of 16-24 year olds do not identify as exclusively heterosexual. Already gay men have relationships in prison and have to keep it under the radar, much like pre1967. Are NOMS getting ready to deal with this change in sexual fluidity or will they stick their head in the sand for a few more decades?
I was in a prison where all the unemployed and OAPs were told to attend an industrial workshop for a Saturday morning and told to bring playing cards and books. Seems the privately run prison was well short of delivering so many hours of productive activity that month so simply had 60 men sat in a workshop for a morning doing nothing just to get their numbers up!
We have 7 High Security prisons in England, the most expensive prison places in the country. They are built to hold men for whom the highest level of security is deemed necessary to make escape impossible. Wakefield has 150 cat As and 600 cat-Bs. Rules put in place 20 years stated anybody getting 10 years or more is automatically a cat-B. Sentences have roughly doubled in the last decade. Wakefield held several men over the age of 70, many were bedridden, plenty had to be on the 1s landing as they couldn't climb stairs. Several were in wheelchairs as they had lost their legs. Why were these people in an expensive cat-A prison? They couldn't even walk up the stairs without stopping for a breather every minute! Having 7 Cat-A jails is a huge expensive vanity project by NOMS. 2 would do the job just fine. The savings would be immense.
I’ve been in for 5 years, was deemed dangerous by the Judge but have had zero rehabilitation in prison. l'll do courses outside, in the community! 90% of the sex offenders released from my current jail this year, some 120 men, will not have attended any treatment course whatsoever. I understand prison is punitive, but I thought there was supposed to be some rehabilitation?
Self-harm is rightfully an issue in prison and there's a lot. Staff are jaded to this now and treat people at risk as seeking attention or trying to jump the queue to get a job, cell move etc. Until this blame culture is eliminated, and genuinely therapeutic communities are embedded self-harm and suicide will continue. News reports frequently emphasise how Spice is derailing prison. Until April that was the case, at my current and previous prison we really did have an ambulance a day. Now that Spice has been made illegal on the out I hardly ever seen any ambulances at the prison. I would suggest this is old news, and people still bringing this up to justify more staff, more budget, are now being dishonest about what things are like post April 2016.
Induction is conducted for all prisoners for the first few weeks in jail. Prisoners coming in for the 20th time go through the exact same induction as some 70 year old coming in for the first time that is genuinely terrified. The system is not built with any nuance, this is an example of it. Everybody does the same induction. lt's just an example of a system that emphasises process over results.
l've worked for 15 years for FTSE100 companies driving though multi-million pound information technology projects that strip costs out of the company and keep them in business. NOMS, at every level, has the most backward unconnected lT that l've ever seen, it's like going back to the 1950s. This lack of lT means prisons employ huge numbers of staff and waste loads of resources as the managers just don't have the information and systems they need to manage. Any normal commercial company would have gone to the wall years ago.
The 2003 Sexual Offences Act doubled sentences over their 1956 equivalent, yet the number of offences reported continues to climb through the roof. This debunks the tough on crime acts as a deterrence myth. We are filling up the prisons with men in for long sentences simply to appease the tabloids.
Random drug tests, they really are random! So expensive drug tests are conducted on people who have never had a drug conviction, may be 60 or 70 years old, etc. Surely the system should have a built bias towards people who are known addicts? This is likely pulling every other granny for a secondary search at an airport. lt's not going to drive down drug use.
Epileptics suffer 60% fewer fits if they have yellow lights in their cell rather than white flourescents that set them off. Yet NOMS does not allow lights to be changed to yellow. This is just wasting healthcare resources as well as driving up incidents of harm in prison.
l've been on prison wings where there is not a single CCTV camera, not one! Violence in this prison was always high and it was often on the news as the most violent prison in the North East and out of control etc. No wonder if the most basic precautions aren't taken. This is willful mismanagement.
Why is the Ministry of Justice keeping hundreds if not thousands of Civil Servants in WC1, central London? This must be a huge waste of money. Move these jobs to a secondary Northern city such as Bradford or Gateshead where real estate and wages are so much lower and the jobs are needed.
So this is not a well argued persuasively written report by academics. lt's a from the trenches set of observations that show the system is broken from top to bottom. NOMS management truly have no control over the system, the system controls them!
After 4 years in this prison men will be released who have never, in four years
Having been so thoroughly institutionalized will these men really be ready to re-join society ready to get a job, be part of a family and make a positive contribution to society? I would suggest not!
**Personal information redacted
December 2016