Freed prisoners 'breach bail to deal drugs back in jail'
Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday August 17 2008
Prisoners freed under the government's controversial early release scheme are deliberately breaching their licences so they can return to jail to deal in drugs, according to probation staff.
Staff working with prisoners at a jail in mid-Wales, who asked to remain anonymous, have told their union that they have uncovered cases of prisoners released on the scheme who deliberately breached their release conditions after buying drugs ordered by inmates. When recalled, the prisoners smuggled the drugs into jail and sold them to inmates.
The claims come at a sensitive time for the Ministry of Justice. It has pledged to tackle the problem of drugs in jails, but prison staff report that substance abuse is rife behind bars. Earlier this year Glynn Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, warned that drugs were coming into prisons 'at a rate that's so dramatic they are actually cheaper than on the outside'. He told how a drug dealer used a ladder to break into Everthorpe Prison in East Yorkshire to deal drugs to inmates through their cell windows.
Last night probation leaders called for an inquiry into the latest claims. 'The allegations of drug importation must be investigated further by the prison authorities as a matter of urgency,' said Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation union, Napo.
The allegations are the latest embarrassment for the government over its decision to free tens of thousands of prisoners early to free space in the UK's overcrowded jails. Since the introduction of the end of custody licence scheme in June last year, more than 31,000 prisoners have been released 18 days before their sentences were due to end.
But the scheme has been plagued by problems. Prisoners have been routinely breaching their release conditions and reoffending. And thousands of prisoners have opted not to take early release because they prefer conditions inside.
Napo estimates about 5,500 men convicted of violence against the person have been released early under the scheme. The union says it is alarmed that many of them were convicted of domestic violence and are being returned to their victims' communities without proper risk assessments being carried out.
'It is abundantly clear that significant numbers of domestic violence perpetrators are being released on end of custody licences when there is a clear risk to women,' Fletcher said.
According to an analysis of the early release scheme by the Conservatives, more than 5,000 prisoners have been freed early, even though they were refused home detention curfew on an electronic tag because they were considered to pose a high risk of reoffending. The Tories also claimed that eight people convicted of sex crimes have been released early, three of them by mistake. There are also concerns over the number of offences being committed by prisoners once granted early release.
DORCHESTERMyths are perpetuated because most people have never seen the inside of a prison and those who have might not want to talk about it. But actually, Dorchester Prison is well run, businesslike and unthreatening.
Governor Tony Corcoran believes criminals are punished by being deprived of liberty. The focus of his prison is therefore protecting the public from harm and rehabilitating offenders -"not about further punishment. It is about how we can address prisoners' needs."
Dorchester is a local prison serving the courts in Dorset and Somerset, with an average length of stay of 42 days.
At any time, about half the 250-odd inmates are convicted and half on remand. It takes all classes of criminal. Those in prison for non-payment of fines mingle with murderers.
Reception prison officer Mel Watts said: "Sometimes they're not expecting to come here and arrive with a packet of fags and their head in a mess. If they are a regular or know they are coming, they might have packed a bag and taken that to court."
Inside story on the Big House
By Lynn Morris
14th May 2008
On arrival, property is removed and bedding and regulation clothing issued. There is currently one prisoner wearing the brightly coloured jumpsuit given to those liable to try and escape.
Dorchester prison was built in Victorian times and most of the small cells designed for one now accommodate two occupants.
Prisoners classified as vulnerable - including sex offenders, those who have committed crimes against children, owe money to drug dealers or have mental health problems - are kept separately in a special wing away from the main prison population.
Prison officer Brian Churchill said: "Prisoners buy the Echo and word gets around. There are some sex offenders who don't want to be classed as vulnerable prisoners but they usually feel safer if they are."
Around half of prisoners have served time before but all spend their first couple of nights in a special section of the prison.
First night centre prison officer Maureen Pitman said: "Some are very frightened at first, some frantic and some so drugged up they don't know what's happening.
"Some people might have left a child with a friend and don't know where they are and others might have left their car at court. We make arrangements for all these things."
After a couple of days prisoners move to one of the wings. In the small cells there is a TV, small kettle, bunk beds and - behind a plastic curtain - a loo and basin. It is not luxurious.
Prisoners can work either mornings or afternoons as an orderly in the gym, cooking, cleaning or sorting laundry.
The job of a kitchen orderly is like working in any industrial kitchen, except all knives and tools are locked up and checked in and out.
The kitchen is run by Jeremy Swinburn, who feeds prisoners for £1.91 a day - an increasing challenge as food prices rise.
Other prisoners attend classes. According to Richard Steele, information advice and guidance team leader, the average prisoner has the education level of an 11-year-old but some can't read or write and others have university degrees.
In prison they can learn literacy, numeracy, computer skills, food hygiene, cookery, industrial cleaning and art.
Mr Steele said: "The certificates are issued from a college so it is not obvious they gained the qualification in prison, which is important for finding work outside."
Prisoners can also attend a course addressing drug issues.
As many as 70 to 75 per cent have problems when they arrive but the prison has a good record on drugs. Last year, on average, 6.9 per cent of prisoners tested positive in random drug tests, down from about a fifth in 2004, with figures in the teens for comparable prisons.
Inmates ignore escape chance in 'cushy' prison
By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent
25/04/2008
Inmates enjoy such comfort in jail that they are ignoring chances to escape, a prison officers' leader has claimed.
In one example, a drug dealer regularly broke into a Yorkshire jail over a six-month period, using a ladder to climb the walls and supply inmates with drugs and mobile phones.
The intruder walked across the yard with the ladder and used it to climb up to a cell window, which had been pulled apart with a crowbar and covered by a dummy grille.
Glyn Travis, the assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, said: "It was an extraordinary case because none of the prisoners inside tried to escape when no doubt they had the opportunity.
"It tells me there's something wrong in society when people are breaking into prisons to bring in drugs, but the prisoners are quite happy to stay inside."
Inmates at a top security prison recently told Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, that conditions there were like a "holiday camp".
They said they enjoyed the use of satellite television and video game consoles as well as their free bed and board.
Prisoners receive wages topped up by bonuses for good behaviour, while drugs are sometimes cheaper in jail than on the streets.
It is understood that there have also been examples of prostitutes being smuggled into HMP Sudbury, a Category D prison, in Derbyshire.
Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, criticised what he called another example of a "failing prison system".
He said: "Prisons should be places of hard work and restoration, preparing offenders to go straight.
"Instead we have overcrowded jails where drugs are rife, prisoners are too often idle and there is little purposeful activity. It is time for a fundamental shake-up of our failing prisons system."
Mr Travis said the break-ins he described were uncovered last January at HMP Everthorpe, which holds about 700 Category C inmates.
The governor, Gary Monaghan, has since moved to an office job working in IT, the Ministry of Justice confirmed.
A spokesman said that inmates at Everthorpe were all in their cells at the time the drug dealer broke in.
However, Mr Travis said: "The prisoners would recognise that if a man can break in so easily and regularly, the opportunity was there to break out. But they did not try."
He blamed under-funding for leaving prison officers' morale at "rock-bottom", as they struggled to cope with an overcrowding crisis that meant conditions were verging on "anarchy".
"Drugs are coming into prisons at a rate that's so dramatic that drugs in prisons are actually cheaper than on the outside," Mr Travis added.
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A book written by an ex-prison officer 
GOPPER's classic "SCREW"
| Read an excerpt from Chapter 1 just CLICK HERE
| “ On another occasion, I was on the upper walkway with a colleague called Higgy, who was also, shall we say, of a comfortable size, when a prisoner shouted to me: “Mr Kelly, you fat bastard”. We both stopped in our tracks and Higgy turned to me and said: “Mr Kelly, did you hear what that prisoner has just called you?” “Yes, I did,” I responded. With that, the prisoner retorted: “You are a fat bastard as well Higgins”. So I turned to my colleague and said: “Mr Higgins, did you hear that?” “Yes” he responded. “And did you hear the lack of respect” I asked? “Yes”, he said, “the con clearly has more respect for you as he called you Mr Kelly and simply referred to me as Higgins”. ”
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The head of the prison service must go
Eric Allison | The Guardian, Wednesday April 9 2008
A visit to a recent employment tribunal hearing transported me back in time to an era when Her Majesty's Prisons were, it seemed, not run by the prison service, but were the fiefdom of the Prison Officers Association (POA); when it was the POA's writ that ran, not that of the ministers and civil servants ostensibly in place to oversee the system.
The hearing was to decide the amount of damages to be awarded to Emma Howie, an officer at Wakefield jail, and a whistleblower described by her solicitor as a "brave woman, who has repeatedly done the right thing".
Howie, 35, joined the service in 1997 at Full Sutton, a high security jail near York. In 1999, she moved to Wakefield to escape hostility shown to her by fellow officers after she gave evidence in serious disciplinary and criminal investigations into the assault of a Full Sutton prisoner. It turned out to be a move from the frying pan to the fire.
In 2005, another Wakefield officer, Carol Lingard, received record £500,000 damages in compensation for constructive dismissal and victimisation after she reported incidents of prisoner abuse by staff. After the hearing, the director general of the prison service, Phil Wheatley, described Lingard's treatment at the hands of her colleagues as "indefensible" and something that he did not "ever want to recur again, at Wakefield or anywhere else". Fine words, but not one of the officers criticised by the Lingard tribunal was disciplined.
Howie was a highly-rated officer. In 2003, she was nominated for the National Prison Officer of the Year award. But because she had blown the whistle at her previous jail, Howie was labelled a "grass" by many of her colleagues. Grass clippings and a wreath were sent to her by post. In 2004, when it became known that she was to give evidence in the Lingard hearing, the level of hostility against her was such that for nine months she had to be escorted in and out of the prison.
Following the Lingard verdict - and just when Howie was set to return to work after maternity leave - she expressed fears for her safety to the new governor at Wakefield David Thompson. That governor, a self-professed "new broom", told her that her perception of the situation was "grossly exaggerated" and that she should "turn the other cheek".
She complained to her managers that the Wakefield branch secretary of the POA had leaked confidential information to a fellow officer, with the intention of drumming up hostility against her as a whistleblower. The tribunal concluded that his only possible motive for this was to "undermine and harm her". The tribunal also found that this officer "deliberately lied" to managers investigating Howie's claims.
Yet neither he, nor the officer who received the document, were disciplined - though managers had conclusive proof that both had lied. Instead, the union official had received a letter from the governor expressing the hope that the investigation had not caused him "undue stress or concern".
The tribunal declared itself "astonished" at the way in which Howie's complaint had been handled. The governor admitted in evidence that, if he challenged the POA, it could "make life difficult" for him.
After Lingard's hearing, Wheatley admitted that she "was failed at every level" of the prison service. Three years on, it beggars belief that another officer, at the same jail, has been similarly let down by the service. Furthermore, the service has spent a small fortune during that time fighting Howie's tribunal case. By all accounts, Wheatley is a decent man. He should now consider doing the decent thing and resign.
· Eric Allison writes on prisons and criminal justice.
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Andy Kershaw has spent six weeks in prison in island capital Douglas
Andy's prison diary
I feel I've been treated severely given that my offences were relatively minor, non-violent and actually a domestic dispute that, in the UK, would probably never have come to the attention of the police or the courts.
The judge acknowledged that the main offence of "harassment" had been accidental.
I ran into my ex-partner when a restraining order was in force. There was no physical contact. I didn't even speak to her.
In essence, I was sentenced to three months for looking at the mother of my children in a public place.
I'd been digging for fishing bait on the beach so I was carrying a garden fork and a bucket of worms but they played no part in the incident.
For that I've suffered the loneliness, the crushing boredom, the deprivation, the squalor, the cold at night - I've had to sleep with my coat on - the vermin, the flea bites, the hair loss and the weeping, red, raw rash that now covers my whole body.
I was in four different cells in four weeks. The prison itself was a disgrace - everyone's idea of a Victorian jail.
It was filthy. There were no toilets in the cells, not even a bucket.
One of the cells in which I was kept had a broken window through which, in late January, a force-nine gale blasted for three days.
Every night I slept in my clothes - thermal vest, shirt, jumper, sailing jacket, jeans and walking boots.
That cell was overrun by vermin and fleas. I would lie on my bed throwing crumbs to the mice.
During a meeting in the wing office, a mouse swaggered jauntily across the floor. The prison officer didn't bat an eyelid.
In each cell there were bunk-beds for two prisoners. I had to share one cell with a drug dealer.
Two steel desks were bolted to the walls and we had one blanket and one pillow each. That was it.
They changed your bedding once a week.
The lights were controlled from outside and switched off at midnight even if you happened to be reading or writing.
The routine for me was to jump out of the cell at 8am when they were first unlocked and race down to the showers.
I was always ready with my towel and toiletries in hand before the officer put the key in the door.
Most of the prisoners didn't bother but for me it was important for reasons of dignity and self-respect.
I'd walk to the showers along the landing, booming a cheery good morning to everyone I met, officers and prisoners.
After showering, breakfast would be dished out on the ground floor of the wing.
It was the same every morning: porridge, tea, toast and spaghetti hoops.
The porridge was superb. I shall miss it a lot - truly the highlight of my day.
If my hunger for prison porridge should overcome me in the next few days, I may well go out and knock off a policeman's helmet.
Then we were locked up from 9am until lunchtime. I never ate lunch because we were using no energy so I didn't need it.
After lunch we were locked up until tea in the late afternoon.
The meals were fatiguing, a nutritionist's nightmare. All starch, fats, salt and sugar.
We were given an apple and an orange once a week.
The first time I see some broccoli I shall get quite giddy.
I am covered in rashes and sores but nothing I guess that won't disappear after a few days of vitamins and daylight.
There was a small outdoor exercise yard that we were allowed to visit for one hour each day.
After two days I decided not to go there again because walking round and round at the bottom of a red-brick box made me feel like a hamster on a wheel - without the wheel.
The highlight of the day was the arrival of the post at 1.30pm, the importance of which was immeasurable.
Everything within the prison seems to be organised to humiliate and undermine your self-confidence.
The only antidote to this was letters. And I spent all my time, when I wasn't reading, writing back to friends and supporters.
The letters have stopped me going barmy even though some of them have been from nutters.
Take the holistic therapist whose advice was "to make time for myself".
Make time for myself? I'm locked in a bloody cell for 20 hours a day. I've got nothing but bloody time for myself.
I also had a letter from Terry Waite, whom I've never met, offering his "every assistance, if it's not too impertinent to say so".
A very kind officer then lent me the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy's autobiography and it put into perspective the triviality of my own situation.
I wrote back to thank him and pointed out that at some point I was tramping the streets of Beirut while he was chained to a radiator.
The bugger didn't walk the streets of Douglas for me.
In return I would have been delighted to be chained to the radiator in my cell, except that it didn't work.
Books were so important. They were the only way not to go mad.
Even just after being sent down, as I sat in the holding cell under the court for most of the rest of the day, I started to plan my reading for the next six weeks.
Generous friends responded.
In 42 days I read 30 substantial books including Barack Obama's autobiography and his political manifesto The Audacity Of Hope.
Every book that came in had to be passed by the literary censor. I imagine he now has a severe P. G. Wodehouse addiction.
I've always been someone who can survive, if not thrive, in any environment and throughout my career I have been in many places around the world much tougher than the Isle of Man prison.
It's been said of me that I can walk with men and talk with kings.
I'm prepared to give everybody the benefit of the doubt unless they prove to me they don't deserve it.
So I got on very well with everyone inside, particularly our little group comprising of the only five prisoners - the jail can hold 92 - who didn't take drugs.
During "association" - visiting other cells - we'd sit in my mate Colin's cell and talk about everything from prison gossip to world affairs, the latter being an innovation of mine (not very popular).
On other occasions we'd listen to the radio and I introduced them to Radio 3 and Radio 4.
I overheard one prisoner remarking to another: "That Radio 4 that Andy listens to all the time is really good. You learn loads of stuff."
And how did I get through each day?
By banking on the fact that by seeing out these six weeks forcibly separated from everything I love, I would have paid my debt to the authorities.
I could then rebuild my dream on the island that I love so much.
And I've already started. It's great to be home with a real fag, a hot shower, a roaring fire, my CDs, a clean bed and my big, daft dog.
1 March 2008 view more news view the topic view the article
