S
itting in a room beside the
prison gardens, Valerie looks fed
up — and who can blame her.
The end of her long sentence
had been in sight just as the
country first went into lockdown. After
eight years in prison she had begun “release
on temporary licence” or ROTL, known as
“rotel” to most prisoners. This can be a big
step on the road home, so long as you do
not breach the trust that has been handed
to you. Valerie, a prisoner at HMP Send in
Surrey, had spent 18 weeks on ROTL,
working for the local council’s parks and
gardens, leaving the prison at 6.30am every
weekday and sometimes not returning until
5.30pm. However, in March Valerie’s day
release came to an abrupt halt when the
Covid-19 pandemic put all our lives on hold.
For her and the other 80,000 prisoners
in the 117 jails in England and Wales, the
crisis did not merely mean being locked
down; it meant being locked up, too, for
up to 23 and a half hours every day. No
more ROTL, no education, no training,
no association, no gym, no chapel and
no family visits.
“It was hard,” says Valerie as she recalls
how it felt when her progress to releasesuddenly stopped. “I was stuck in a box
all the time and it took me a while to
understand what was happening.”
In recent months some restrictions had
been lifted or eased, but many were still in
place and, just as for the rest us, the risk of a
return to lockdown proved to be all too real.
Carlene Dixon, who was the prison
governor until recently taking up a post at
the Ministry of Justice, is in the room with
us and speaks quietly to Valerie. She tries
to be reassuring. “It’s not all lost, that work
you’ve put in,” she says. I am sure Valerie
appreciates the thought, but she doesn’t
look convinced.
Valerie’s fate was out of the governor’s
hands. Amid dire warnings from PublicHealth England at the start of the pandemic
that Covid-19 could run rampant through
prisons in “explosive outbreaks” and cause
up to 2,700 deaths, the prison service put
preservation of life first when it imposed its
lockdown scheme. Even then no one knew
whether that would be enough.
Seven months after lockdown began,
Valerie’s ROTL has still not resumed. She
could only come and go if she went into
permanent isolation and that is not a
realistic solution. Now, as much as ever,
the threat of the virus getting into prisons
remains. A recent outbreak at HMP
Lowdham Grange in Nottingham led to
dozens of cases among prisoners and staff,
and at the time of writing one prisoner
has died. It was the 33rd Covid death across
the prisons estate since lockdown. Though
each one is a tragedy, this was the first for
many months and the death toll has been
significantly lower than initial predictions.
Prisons have had to strike a difficult
balance between keeping people safe
from infection and allowing prisoners to
continue with activities that may help with
their rehabilitation.
I was the first journalist allowed inside
a prison since lockdown. During exclusiveLifer Sarah tends to her chilli plants in the prison garden at HMP Send. Previous pages: offenders at HMP Isis welcome the return of the gymSome staff said they felt
underappreciated. Amid
all the clapping for key
workers, prison officers
never get a mention
10 • The Sunday Times Magazine