ANDREW TESTA FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
visits to three institutions — HMP Send;
HMP Full Sutton, a men’s high-security
prison near York; and HMP Isis, a men’s
and young offenders’ prison in southeast
London — I walked through wings and
along landings, spoke with prisoners in
their cells and learnt first-hand their fears
and frustrations, hearing many moving
stories of resilience and struggle.
I saw, too, that governors and staff have
real concerns for the prisoners’ mental
health and wellbeing, and are putting in
a huge effort to keep everyone safe and
identify troubled individuals. Some staff
told me they felt underappreciated.
Prisons are a forgotten world for many of
us — amid all the clapping for key workers,
prison officers never get a mention.
“My mum’s terrified,” says one officer.
She and her colleagues tend to give
sanitised versions of their day to their loved
ones when they get home from work, or just
turn on the television instead. “I don’t want
to talk, I’d rather watch Bake Off.”HMP SEND Surrey
Women’s closed prison. Population: 203There is no mistaking HMP Send for
anything other than a prison, but there is
something essentially therapeutic and
purposeful about its regime. I don’t suppose
there are many prisons where the prisoners,
during lockdown, asked for and were
granted permission to knit jumpers for
newborn lambs. It happened at Send.
The prisoners also held a seed-growing
competition in their cells. We see a
sunflower stretching its yellow face out
through a cell window. Up to 60 women
used to work in the prison’s four and a half
acres of garden, but during lockdown this
was cut to a handful. Under the guidance
of the prison’s horticulturalist, Andrew
Adam-Bradford, the garden orderlies
went into production, creating vegetable
boxes for prison staff to spare them
queueing outside shops after their shifts,
holding a regular market for staff and
increasing their contributions to the
kitchens. The prison chickens provide eggs,
but the real pride is in the extraordinary
production of chillies and chilli powder by
a prisoner called Sarah.
Sarah is a lifer. We don’t discuss her
offence, but it must have been something
very serious. She’s an older woman who,
I learn, has self-harmed in the past and
has many scars. Clearly the matriarchal
figure in the gardens, Sarah tells me that
when prisoners emerged from lockdown
she took them under her wing, especially
the ones who were vulnerable, and got
them into the greenhouse planting
tomatoes and cucumbers. Some of the
women were overwhelmed by watching
a plant grow from a tiny seed. It was
relaxing and stopped them wanting toharm themselves, Sarah says — better
than sitting in their cells playing mind
games, everything going round in circles.
Sarah says she is now at peace with herself.
She has accepted what she did in the past
and recognises where her life went wrong.
HMP Send had some false alarms for
coronavirus outbreaks and struggled at
times when significant numbers of staff
were shielding or self-isolating. The prison
created a shielding unit for the most
vulnerable women and focused generally
on hygiene and cleanliness as well as
communications and in-cell activities.
The chaplain, Lesley Mason, arranged
for every prisoner to have a DAB radio,financed by prison funds, and bought them
all herself from Argos. She also launched
a twice-weekly newsletter, Raise Your Voice!,
which offered an opportunity for the
women to ask questions and send
supportive messages to other prisoners,
such as: “Hi, Riah on J wing. Miss you and
can’t wait till this is over so we can continue
good times & laughs we have.” Some
women were in relationships and were no
longer able to see each other.
Even as restrictions were eased and
more time out from their cells was
permitted, the prisoners remained in their
cohorts on the landings. Staff, together with
a small army of the chaplain’s volunteers,
initiated regular visits to all prisoners,
looking out for signs of depression and
keeping a careful watch on those who
caused concern.
“Not seeing their families has been one
of the hardest things,” one officer working
in the shielding unit tells me. Even though
visits have now been reinstated at Send,
uptake has been limited because they
require social distancing. “Imagine the
difficulty for children who can’t hug their
mums,” says the officer.
The most “complex” prisoners are kept
in the psychologically informed planned
environment (Pipe) unit, and that’s where
I meet Charmaine, a woman in her early
thirties. She is open and unguarded and
wants to be heard. She says she struggled
at times through lockdown, not least
because her mother contracted the virus
and had a slow recovery — while of course
Charmaine could not see her. And when
lockdown lifted Charmaine was herself
suspected of having the virus and forced to
self-isolate. It was mad, she says.An entry from the prison’s seed-growing
competition emerges from a cell windowFor much of lockdown prisoners had less than an hour each day out of their cells to exerciseThe Sunday Times Magazine • 11