Sickening sight of rat-infested jail

HEATHER MILLS

Home Affairs Correspondent

One of the most sickening images of Holloway jail for the new Chief Inspector of Prisons was watching a rat, which was so huge it could not fit into one of the traps set to catch the vermin.

He was appalled that women inmates had headlice but were unable to get the medicated shampoo needed to rid them on the problem.

He was shocked at the parcels of faeces, food and used tampons rotting in courtyards outside cell windows - hurled there by prisoners with no litter bins and no access to working toilets.

But squalor was only one aspect of life in Britain's largest women's jail that prompted General Sir David Ramsbotham to pull his 11-strong inspection team out of the Victorian jail in protest at the conditions and prompting a major political row.

He was, according to sources at the prison, ashamed at the lack of care and treatment of many of the jail vulnerable prisoners - the mentally ill, the abused, foreign nationals and pregnant women. He is also to be told of allegations that one pregnant woman was shackled to a male prison warder, while having anti-natal examinations. Another was said to have been exposed to a male officer while showering.

Holloway uses "closet chains" - tied round the ankles but of sufficient length to pass under a lavatory door, supposedly to afford women a degree of dignity. Yesterday one worker in the jail said that no women were allowed out of the jail, even on hospital visits, without being chained - no matter how petty the crime. "Overzealous security" was one of the major shortfalls the 11 inspectors identified in their four days in the jail, before Sir David pulled them out.

One woman who was released from Holloway earlier this year, but who asked not to be named for legal reasons said: "You would not believe what was happening to women in there."

Locked in their cells for hours on end - most were "banged up from 3.30 in the afternoon until the next morning" - many were "cutting up" or harming themselves.

There have been two suicides in the jail in the past six months.

The 38 year-old woman said that no glass was allowed into the jail, so women were mutilating themselves on nails pulled out of walls or even on sharp hard lumps of paint on radiators and were also gouging their faces or scratching their arms and legs.

"They are given pills to make them sleep and others to control them in the day." There were often fights and bullying.

She herself said that she had written to the Home Office on her release complaining of conditions in the jail.

Women can spend up to 23 hours a day locked in their cells. Education, work and out of cell association and activities have been severely cut back.

Some of the jail's problems - as identified by Anne Widdicome, the Prison Minister - are due to a massive staff shortage. And those officers who are working in the jail are, according to Chris Tchaikovsky, director of Women in Prison, literally dropping on their feet, through stress and overwork.

They are owed 4,000 hours time off in lieu, which they cannot take and on any one day up to 30 will be off sick.

But critics say poor management at all levels and the concentration of unneccessary security has exacerbated the problem. One prison officer said: " I did not join the service to lock women in their cells all day."

But the full effects of the chaos in Holloway goes much further, adding considerably to the misery and stress of inmates. Lack of staff means prisoner get to their visits late, reducing essential and vital time with their families. Visits with lawyers have been similarly affected, leaving women with the belief that they are being denied justice.

Women are not receiving clothes parcels and reduced canteen and welfare services. "We have women here with literally no underwear, deportees with no clothes" said one welfare worker at the jail.

One former inmate, Karen Stott, a 36 year old mother, released from Holloway last month, said: "It's very tense in there, there's a lot of people with mental problems who are not getting the right help, they just put them on medication.

"It's filthy, it's not cleaned property, there's nothing for the women to do, there's not even any books to pick up and read, it's nearly all 24-hour lock up all the time."

Emma Humphries, recently freed from Holloway by the Court of Appeal after her conviction for killing her violent partner was reduced to manslaughter, said: "Conditions were appalling particularly if you were mentally or physically ill. You were left all day with very little care or attention, locked in your cell and treated like animals."

She said with some notable exceptions man staff treated prisoners as "sub-human".

The welfare worker said: "So many of these problems are so easily preventable and, I think it was that, which really got to the prison inspectors."