Killers Behind Bars. Kate Kray
officer of any health problems you have, he won’t know about your ailments, so you may not get any treatment for them. In general, he will ask you if you have been receiving any medical or psychiatric treatment, if you have had any problems with alcohol or drugs and also whether you have HIV (the AIDS virus) or if you have had contact with anyone with HIV.
The physical side of Colin Richards’s problems is obvious but the mental problems he is suffering run much deeper. I feel very strongly about Colin’s situation. The crime that he committed was an appalling one, as you will find out when you read his chapter. However, the medieval days of throwing a prisoner into a dungeon and letting him rot are long gone. As a civilised nation, we would be appalled if an animal was being treated in this way. Colin Richards is a human being and should be entitled to human dignity. He has nobody. Soon after he was sentenced his wife left him and now lives in France with the two children he adores. Since he’s been away, both of his parents have died. He has nobody to care for him nor to help him; every day of his life is a struggle.
He told me about a visit that he had recently. His visitor had travelled a long way for the two-hour visit. It had taken Colin all morning to get ready and there were only three-quarters of an hour left of the visit but still nobody had come to help him across to the visiting hall where his visitor was waiting. By the time he finally reached the five steep steps leading into the hall, he had had enough. Still, no one came to help him. The hall was packed with cons and their visitors. Nobody looked up or gave him a second glance.
‘It felt like I was invisible,’ he said. ‘The door behind me was locked. I couldn’t go back and I couldn’t go down the steps. I just sat there unable to move. In sheer desperation, I cried out: “Please, somebody help me!”
‘The whole of the visiting hall fell silent. Tears rolled down my face. I was helpless. I just sat at the top of those steps and cried. At that moment I just wished I was dead!’ His eyes filled with tears as he spoke and he dropped his head.
I didn’t know what to say to him. Normally I am never stuck for words but, for the first time in my life, I struggled to find the right words to say, to give him some kind of hope.
‘There must be something someone can do.’ I told him.
He looked at me and sighed: ‘Oh yeah, what?’
As I left the prison that wet afternoon, I promised that I would find out what could be done to help him. All the way home on the train, I couldn’t get Colin out of my mind. There had to be some kind of help available, but what? I didn’t know where to start.
When I got home I looked up a booklet written by the Howard League for Penal Reform. There, they list all the organisations that are useful to people in prison. As I thumbed through the pages, I found that there were groups and counselling services to help just about everyone – there is a Rastafarian Advisory service, a Gay Rights action group – in all, over 66 different organisations. To my surprise, there was nothing for disabled people in prison. In the ten years that Colin has been in prison, he has never had any counselling to help him to come to terms with his disability. Surely, I thought, in the new prisons that are being built in this country, they can build some kind of secure unit with facilities to cater for the likes of Colin Richards.
I promised Colin that I would try to help him – not to campaign for his release but to make the public aware of what was happening, and continues to happen, to people like him.
Most of us are unaware that there are people with disabilities in prison, just as most people think there is only one women’s prison in Britain – Holloway in London. In fact, there are 12 in England and Wales. Holloway Prison provides a national centre for treating women with psychiatric problems. Styal Prison, which is in Cheshire, Cookham Wood in Kent and Bullwood Hall in Essex are all closed prisons for convicted and sentenced women prisoners. The only other closed prison for women is H Wing at Durham and that is where I visited most of the women in this book.
Durham H Wing is a small unit inside Durham men’s prison. The self-contained unit holds up to 40 women, all serving long sentences, and most are classified Cat. A. Women are allowed to wear their own clothes as long as they’re considered to be suitable. However, there are many other things that have to be taken into account when you’re a female prisoner. If you’re pregnant and likely to give birth shortly after your arrest or committal, you will go to one of the three mother and baby units that exist at Holloway, Styal and Askham Grange.
According to prison rules, pregnant women prisoners should not be alone at night; they must share a cell or have a bed in the hospital wing so that there are other people around to call on for help if necessary. If you give birth while you are in prison, or if you have a very young baby when you are sent to prison, you can apply to have your baby with you. The mother and baby unit at Holloway takes babies up to nine months. At Styal closed prison and Askham Grange open prison, the age limit is 18 months.
If you apply to keep your baby with you in prison, your application will be considered very carefully by a team of doctors, health visitors, paediatricians, prison staff and Social Services. They will consider different factors:
a) if your other children were in care before you were sent to prison;
b) whether your baby will be over the unit age limit before your release;
c) if you’re suffering from a mental or physical illness that will affect your ability to look after your baby;
d) if you are considered a disruptive influence and will not co-operate with staff.
Once you have been accepted into the unit there are, of course, strict rules and they must be followed.
The way each unit is run varies but there are rules about not having your baby in your bed and about when you’re allowed to bath a baby. Babies are usually left in a nursery for at least four hours a day while the prisoner is at work or in a class.
Depending on your behaviour, the Prison Service can decide to move you to another prison. This could mean heartbreaking separation for you and your baby. If, for instance, you are at Askham Grange and your baby is 12 months old and you were then sent to Holloway, your baby would be over the unit age limit and the baby would have to go somewhere else. There are special visiting arrangements for children who are not in prison with their mothers. They can be brought in for fortnightly visits. These visits are extended and much more relaxed than other visits but the prisoners find it difficult and become frustrated.
The overwhelming need to mother their children can sometimes be the cause of trouble inside women’s prisons. Linda Calvey, who I met in Durham H wing, told me: ‘It really gets to the women, being separated from their kids. It wasn’t so bad for me because mine were a bit older. But not being there for them if they have a problem; knowing someone else is looking after your kids, is the worst. You feel helpless!’
When I met Linda, she hadn’t long become a grandmother and she proudly showed me photographs of her grand-daughter. Prison is not the sort of place you expect to find a grandma and Linda Calvey certainly doesn’t look anything like one. When I visited her, she looked young, was dressed in trendy clothes and was planning to remarry.
Over 80,000 offences against prison discipline are punished by the authorities each year. A high level of these tend to be in young offender institutions and women’s prisons.
Many of the long-term prisoners to whom I have spoken tell me that the thing that gets under their skin most is the stupid rules in prison. These rules often don’t make any sense to the prisoner and they find themselves getting in trouble for what seems to them just a screw having ‘an attitude’. Take, for instance, the rules about shaving. Men are expected to shave daily, unless they already had a beard when they were arrested. If you want to grow a beard or a moustache or to shave one off, you have to make out an application to the governor. While this may seem a stupid rule to the prisoner, when I asked a prison officer the reason for it he said it was simple: ‘In case the prisoner escapes! Every year prisoners have an up-to-date photo taken of them, to be issued to the police if they were to escape. If they had grown a beard inside prison then nobody would recognise them.’
Prison discipline