‘I was a prison officer in Strangeways and it gave me PTSD – this is how our jails must change’ Neil Samworth says cuts to staffing in jails worsened conditions for prison officers like him in HMP Manchester, leaving him […]

Neil Samworth says cuts to staffing in jails worsened conditions for prison officers like him in HMP Manchester, leaving him with mental scars. He tells Rob Hastings of his nightmares and what reforms are needed

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 across the country. Violent attacks have hit record levels in cells and corridors across England and Wales. Self-harming has almost doubled over the past four years in Scotland’s jails. In Northern Ireland, it’s claimed that prisoners in Maghaberry have had to help care for fellow inmates due to staff shortages.

The i newsletter latest news and analysis Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

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?

The effects of staffing cuts

For 10 years Neil Samworth worked at the infamous Strangeways high-security 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 – whose career saw him handle psychopaths and murderers, including Mark Bridger and Jonathan Vass, and left him suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – says this is a relatively small worry.

“Prisoners are not concerned about their environment,” he tells i. “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 25-day siege, facilities were updated and inmates began to be allowed out of cells for longer periods to ease tensions.

However, Samworth – the 55-year-old author of Strangeways: My Life as a Prison Officer – 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.”

Prison sentences aren’t spent on PlayStations

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.”

He continues: “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.”

‘I wanted a chance to tell people what its like’

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, as Samworth describes in his book. After working first at a secure mental health unit and then at the privately run 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.

Some of the scenes he describes in his autobiography, including suicides, are deeply disturbing. “The writing of the book made me quite ill,” Samworth 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.”

‘I wanted to punch Mark Bridger’s face in’ Among the high-profile prisoners that Neil Samworth had to deal with while working in HMP Manchester was Mark Bridger, who has been told he will spend the rest of his life in jail for killing five-year-old April Jones in 2012 in Machynlleth, Wales. Bridger spent 10 months on remand in Strangeways before being found guilty, when he was transferred to HMP Wakefield. “He’s manipulative, he’s an evil person,” says Samworth, who says he has had nightmares about Bridger hurting his own daughter. “He’s a fantasist, a liar, a sociopath, narcissistic. Every interaction with me and my colleagues and other prisoners, every moment it was like some evil sort of fog creeping under your skin.” Samworth recalls sitting in on health reviews while Bridger was effectively on suicide watch. “He was whining he’d never see his dog again and he’d probably be in prison when his parents died. It was all me, me, me. All the time you know he’s done something evil to this little girl. There were times I wanted to punch his face in – but I remained professional.”

Cuts begin to bite

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. In the last six months of his work, Samworth says, “there was no chatting with prisoners, no interaction, and that makes it a dangerous place.”

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.

“There are a lot of tough lads in there, some big lads, aggressive, some evil people. If they can see a vulnerability in an officer, they’ll have a go. If you don’t challenge them, they start taking over.”

Prisoners can be some of the most vulnerable people in society

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.

“There’s a lot of people in prison who have done things because they’re mentally unwell and never had treatment. There are a lot of people who have been abused.”

He says this should not serve as an excuse for crime, but cites one example who “was clearly unwell, he wasn’t violent, he wasn’t dangerous but mentally he was unstable”.

“He’d been a squaddie, his dad was one of the most prolific pedophiles this country has ever known, and all three times he left us he went onto the street because we couldn’t find him anywhere to live. He hung himself, and that was very sad. He hadn’t reached 30.”

The mental strain becomes too much

Gradually, things became too much. His mental health was deteriorating and he suffered from nightmares. “I was becoming more and more out of control – anxious, angry,” he says.

“There is a macho culture, you don’t talk about feelings,” he adds. “The prison never offered any help, and to be fair I never asked for any.”

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. Hearing of his experiences, it’s hard to imagine how this was anything other than inevitable.

Soon after, one of his colleagues died of a stroke just after retiring aged 56, and Samworth feared he was heading the same way.

How the prison system can be rescued There are several ways that the prison service should be reformed, according to Neil Samworth: Training of staff should be less academic and more practical, he argues, including shadowing officers.

Sentences should be reformed to fit the severity and impact of crimes.

Prisoner education should start with the basics of how to read and write, and job training should be provided in practical trades such as plastering and manufacturing.

The prison population should be reduced with more electronic tagging, and full-body scanners installed at all prisons to stop smuggling.

Asked what he would like the Justice Secretary, David Gauke, to do, Samworth says: “ I’d ask him to go visit a prison like Strangeways, unannounced, go and spend an hour, during the day, when prisoners are out, observing what it’s like.” He adds that th e prisons minister should remain in the job for a number of years to ensure stability in the system.

Samworth is recovering – but can the prison system?

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 have been outlined by Justice Secretary, while the Government has hit its target of recruiting 2,500 prison officers in England and Wales 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.

‘Strangeways: A Prison Officer’s Story’ by Neil Samworth (Sidgwick & Jackson, £14.99) is out now