EXCLUSIVE
VIDEO
How HMP Isis
tackled Covid-19;
thesundaytimes.
co.ukFrom top: the governor, Gareth Sands, left,
meets with wing reps from the prisoner
council; a cell for new arrivals to quarantineHalf the wing reps in the
meeting are lifers who
have killed someone; the
other half are serving
more than 14 years
What is surprising about the meeting is
the level of anxiety expressed about the
virus. The reps say the prisoners want them
to report their concerns about the need for
staff to wear masks and observe social
distancing. They say they get it in the neck
from their wing mates — verbally, that is
— if staff are not seen to be complying.
The previous weekend there were two
positive tests among staff on B wing. They
had to self-isolate and the prison used its
track and trace scheme to identify and
isolate certain prisoners. That wing has
quite an elderly population, with some
“household names” in terms of their
offences, I am told, and some had started
panicking, pressing their cell buttons.
No one knew what was going on, says a
prisoner rep at the meeting, which raised
fears and affected morale. The governor
agrees they could have done more to
explain what was happening.
The governor tells the reps that
facemasks for prisoners are under
consideration. He fields questions about
hygiene relating to the microwave ovens
that prisoners use and the provision of
landlines. Prisoners want to have
telephones in their cells, but that is two
years away, says the governor.
Sands tells me the high-risk, high-profile
population can pose extra problems
because some of the men are not interested
in rehabilitation work. They want to keep
their heads down and serve their sentences
“one day at a time”, which I am told by a
prisoner is the best way to get through it.
They are often sex offenders, says the
governor. I suspect that denial may be a
factor, a refusal to accept their crimes,
which is a common difficulty among men
convicted of sexual offences.
It seems oddly serene wherever we go
in the prison. Sands says that although
there has been boredom, frustration and
some disgruntlement during lockdown,
there has been no real push-back from
the prisoners. He has encouraged those
whose progress has been halted by the
pandemic to think of the restrictions as
a sabbatical or a rest.
We meet two members of the prison’s
dedicated search team, who often spent
lockdown in full PPE, searching prisoners,
their cells and communal spaces for
weapons, drugs, hooch and other illegal
items such as mobile phones. The otherday they found a memory stick and a card
reader hidden in a prisoner’s mouth. They
have been known to find mobile phones
— small ones, admittedly — up prisoners’
bottoms. But it is the weapons that are
most alarming: shards of CD or a CD case,
broken plastic cutlery, a metal strip
from inside a television, wrapped at one
end in a strip of torn bedding to
form a handle. There were fewer
finds in lockdown, but the
problem did not go away.
The gym reopened
recently and every landing
in the prison has now had its
turn, each visiting in its own
cohort of about 18 prisoners,
their own social bubble.
Full Sutton’s PE team did their
best to organise some outside events
during lockdown and distributed workout
sheets to prisoners’ cells. There are always
problems with obesity in the prison and
they were exacerbated by lockdown.
Full Sutton’s safer custody team also
expected to see an increase in mental
health problems and incidents of self-harmamong the prisoners because of the
pandemic, but these went down rather
than up. I find no support in any prison,
however, for the contention that the
lockdown was a “blessing in disguise” —
a view offered last month by the chairman
of the Prison Officers’ Association, Mark
Fairhurst. Everyone agrees the restrictions
were essential to save lives, but the strict
regime did a lot of harm, the full effects of
which are still to be felt.
“It has, without doubt, been a
challenging period,” says the prisons
minister, Lucy Frazer, “for prisoners, for
staff and their loved ones. But this period
has also been an opportunity to learn
some valuable lessons. Although we have
always appreciated it, the importance of
technology has become even clearer. Video
visits are a vital part of a future service.”
Such innovations will be a benefit
long after the virus has (hopefully) been
controlled. “Purple visits” — the prison
equivalent of Zoom calls between
prisoners and families — have been
rolled out across the prisons
estate, including Full Sutton,
where I see one in action
and hear about the
teething problems.
They are conducted in
small rooms using laptops,
in the presence of a prison
officer and with external
monitoring. Full Sutton had
one laptop for each wing, but the
limitations of its internet capacity
meant only three visits could be conducted
at a time, without the perils of freezing that
we are all so familiar with. Family members
must have security clearance and only
authorised people can participate on a
virtual visit. If someone else appears and is
ANDREW TESTA FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE not recognised by the system, the
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