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Following recently reading a Howard League for Penal Reform campaign with reference to Young Prisoners and suicide, I thought it important I contain in my blog my experience of suicide in prisons. During 1990, I went into Armley Prison in Leeds on remand. It was my first period in Armley Prison, but not my first time in a jail. I was comfortable that I’d be practised to deal with my duration in my local jail, and thankfully I did, I knew people from my prior spells incarcerated in other prisons, at the age of 17 I’d become hardened into a life behind bars.
Nevertheless, my experience of that period will exist alongside me eternally. At the same time, I was in B wing, the Y.P. (Young Prisoner) wing in Armley, many prisoners had recently been relocated from Strangeways Prison; which had just gone through one of the worst prison riots in British penal history. Armley Prison was a wash with activity and tension. They’re were efforts to riot in Armley by the Y.P.’s and adult prisoners. The jail was on lock down, no association, no learning, no activity at all was often the case. Prisoners, including the young prisoners were on lock down, sometimes for 24 hours. Only ever let out for slop out, pouring out our piss buckets and filling up our jugs with water. The toilets were often unavailable and little duration was given for those who desperately desired to have a crap. Shit parcels were the only option for many, throwing them out onto the exercise yard.
The pressure got too many in Armley Prison during that time, and oddly they’re appeared to be a lot of adolescent lads (children, rightly described by the Howard League for Penal Reform) remanded or given custodial sentences. However, other people like me had often been given non-custodial sentences for equivalent wrongdoings.
All things considered in terms of the state of the prison system in England at the time, riots and disturbances were rife; given that since 1989, many prisons in England and the UK had riots and a general sense of despair going on. The prison system was ready to breakdown. In addition it should be remembered our criminal justice system was still locking up young offenders who in different courts would have been given an alternative to imprisonment.
What sickened me the most was the sounds at night at this particular time. The routine noise during the hours of darkness, would be fellow prisoners conversing to others via the bars in the window. From time to time calling out at the prison officers doing security checks around the perimeter walls. Some of the witticisms bellowed out at the officer were frequently very funny, and would lighten the melancholy. Other people would be throwing a line either to a cell below or the cell two , three across and passing a bit of contraband here and there. Some other people would be calling out to other prisoners on C wing , or abuse to those on protection on A wing. These were ordinary occurrences in Armley, and almost certainly every other prison within the UK. The distinction at this time was the uneasiness, the locking up of offenders for nearly 24 hours. Some were only 17 year old children, like me. Some of the lads had not ever experienced prison previously. None of us had experienced prison during the sort of troubles which were in progress throughout the prison system in Britain at that time. We believed that we were in a very precarious position. The chaos and pending atmosphere of trouble was sending some of the experienced prisoners into a state of preparation, a preparation to be dangerous, and in some cases, a preparation, assisted by the state of affairs; the prison was in, a cruel state of flux.
Like I said, the sound at night at that time was horrifying, in fact, if anybody wants to possibly know what it is like been in Bedlam, an asylum where the patients are left to live within their madness; I had a good idea of what that must of been like, during the night within Leeds Prison. I can still hear the sounds I will describe, I can still sometimes feel the fear, the unknowing of what was taking place, in particular when I contemplate the past, and my cancerous pain of experience.
The tone of the beating on doors within the early hours, while laying restless and weary. It was the sound often that of a juvenile prisoner (a child) who had endeavored to take his own life, either by hanging themselves from the antique cast iron rusting bars within the windows, or had attempted to slit their arms or wrist with razor blades. The razors were generally presented to those who had nothing to shave.
The din of footsteps racing up or down the cast iron steps, the keys quarrelling across the landing reverberating in the dead hush of night. The door opening, keys falling against the reinforced Victorian doors in addition to further footsteps. The noise of muffled voices and the report of other prisoners amusing themselves by means of anecdotes and requests for the person’s belongings. Later the calls from prisoners mocking the victim of a system so wrong, would eventually stop, silence would overtake the wing. A sense of fear and wild nightmarish imagination will full your thoughts. Gossip would spread throughout the wing, inmates talking through the ancient pipes and windows, in the attempt to find out if the child was successful or not in his attempt to end the nightmare of his incarceration. After the silence the inmates would be shouting to find out if anyone knew the boy who had just attempted or had successfully achieved their aim.
The question I was asking myself, while reading the Howard League for Penal Reform documents, ‘was suicide still a problem? ” Particularly amid the youth in prison. We hear so little on the news, nowadays, or I’ve just become deaf, a sort of scotoma in fear of the memories which occasionally haunt my life and soul. after reading the numerous articles on the Howard League for Penal Reform web site (http://www.howardleague.org) I became more aware of my memories and sadness at the knowledge suicide within prison is still a major indictment on our society. The worst part of that time and experience in Armley Prison in 1990, is that of a boy I had spent time with, a time I had chosen to leave in the darkness within my memory.
What will endure with me eternally, is the fact that a boy, and I say a boy inasmuch as he was just a kid, a kid who was locked up and whom I had shared a cell with for a sum of weeks. He attempted suicide and succeeded, not while I was in prison. He was only 17. He should not have been in prison, it was his first offence. Moreover he paid for it with his life. a life sentence. I had left prison several weeks earlier, I was given a non-custodial sentence. One day, walking out of the local newsagents, after grabbing the local paper, I saw his face on the front page of the Yorkshire Evening Post, the picture remains with me, in my mind, and my nightmares.
I just knew him transiently, a few weeks, but 23-24 hours a day you come to get to know someone. He had attempted to commit suicide previously before they put him in my cell, in fact, I was in a cell in the company of two unsuccessful young prisoners who had attempted suicide, before they joined me in my cell. The officers at Armley knew I wasn’t a bully, in addition to not being a bullying bastard, of which I had met many in prison, I had family connections inside the prison population in Armley; so they knew I, with them, would be all right. Both lads were a little immature, at times, but so was I, at the end of the day we were young, not yet old enough to vote, or drink alcohol. Most kids our age were either still at school or college. II would propose the two were un-worldly in terms of being capable of handling prison life. unlike like those like me who had experienced been in a Detention Centre or Young Offenders Institution. However, they were not stupid, they did not put themselves on protection or the hospital wing, which would have possibly gravely damaged or even saved their prospects of surviving in any general population in any jail. However, considering the state of the prison system at the time, the relocation of many prisoners from Strangeways to Leeds, it is possible the overcrowding and subsequent disturbances were in fact reasons they were not able to put themselves on protection or be allowed to stay in hospital where they could of been monitored. I am unable to recall the boy’s names, I have searched for news articles online, but am unable to find them. I will check the Yorkshire Evening Post archives, for the kid who died, name to be remembered and honoured, as a victim of state which does not care.
Just one of the lads had committed suicide. When he attempted to do it earlier he had somehow slipped through a safety net. The question we must ask, did the safety net exist? I do not think he would have been permitted back onto B wing, if the safety net was working correctly. That is if the prison had the resources at the time to deliver the care it is supposed to. In the course of time, we shared a cell, I realised the boy from Bradford who I was later to learn had taken his life, was only a youngster, in that he understood nothing of being a criminal, or being part of the criminal classes. He had no one in that prison, no one who would take care of him, he had only himself a place where being alone is like being an injured animal in the wilds of Africa. He was a little odd, in that he would allege to see things other people could not. I believe it was his method of managing, or to just act vaguely mad, so others might be cautious. However, considering the fact he had already attempted suicide, and his behaviour irrational, the boy was obviously having mental difficulties, ask yourself, should this young boy from Bradford have been in a prison, or a system which was in a state of collapse and danger. Was the Home Secretary and the courts guilty of manslaughter, in terms of lack of due care, in a prison which was overcrowded, stretched and at breaking point?
At no time had I seen his criminal record, and don’t recall what was said in the Yorkshire Evening Post at the time of his death. However, he did tell us, as all prisoners usually do, in terms of what they are in for; that he was in prison for. In hindsight, the thought that he was in a prison for stealing a purse from a care home where he worked, I think as a volunteer, is a marker in terms of our cruelty. It’s tough to imagine a kid, a boy whose life had not yet seriously started, lost his existence in such a place, the likes of Armley Prison for pilfering a purse. I cannot confirm this of course, although it is the only information I have, and all things considered it is nearly 20 years ago, the memories are still fresh, in terms of the hellish sounds and images of that time, but to be honest for much of those past 20 years I have tried running from my past, I can no longer run, I now want to run head long into the wind of horror we call a system that should be caring, and rehabilitating.
Please study the following documents provided by the Howard League for Penal Reform, on the state of suicide and self harm in prisons, which restrain Young Offenders. By their kind permission, I am able to circulate their findings on my blog..
Join the campaign, show your encouragement, my story is just one out of the many thousands who have either being exposed to this experience otherwise have experience of suicide and self harm.
I will later debate in this blog, the experience of bullying and terrible conditions, which are time and again components corresponding with suicide in prisons. Thank you.
Before you go, remember that child, a young scared looking kid, looking much younger than he actually was, scrawny, and up against a system, that benefits the hard, callus, and strong. Would you have sent this child to his death, support what is his campaign, and the many others who lay in their coffins, or in hospitals nursing wounds that will never heal.
News release
There are around 3,000 children in custody in England and Wales. The vast majority (around 80%) are held in prisons. 10% are held in privately run secure training centres and 10% are held in local authority secure children’s homes.
For weekly statistics on the numbers of children in custody click here.
- England and Wales lock up more children than any other country in Western Europe (Council of Europe, 2007, SPACE I annual penal statistics).
- Children in custody are serving longer sentences. The average length of an immediate custodial sentence for children aged 10-17 at magistrate’s court doubled from 3.3 months in 1997 to 6.6 months in 2007. The average length custodial sentence at crown court rose from 20.1 months to 20.4 months in the same period (Sentencing statistics England and Wales, 2007)
- In 2007, 10,467 children aged 15 to 17 were received into prison on remand or under sentence (Offender management caseloads statistics 2007, table 6.1, home office)
- The Chair of the Youth Justice Board said that twice as many children are locked up as a decade ago, despite the fact that the British Crime Survey recorded a 44% decline in crime and no evidence of an increase in crime committed by children (The Guardian, 25 October 2006).
Prison suicides leap by 37% in 2007
The Howard League for Penal Reform has condemned a 37% leap in the annual figures for self-inflicted deaths in custody.
- 92 men, women and children killed themselves in prisons in England and Wales in 2007. This represents a leap of 37% on the previous year. In 2006, the figure for self-inflicted deaths was 67.
- In particular, the figure for female self-inflicted deaths leapt by 167%. Eight women killed themselves in custody in 2007, the same figure as the entirety of both 2005 and 2006.
- Seven under 21s killed themselves in prison in 2007, compared to only two in 2006 – a rise of 250%. The youngest was 15 year old Liam McManus, who hanged himself at Lancaster Farms prison in November. He was serving a sentence of only one month 14 days for breach of a supervision order.
- Only 22 of the 92 prisoners were being monitored on suicide watch as part of the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) Plan.
- 13 prisons had three or more suicides. Belmarsh, Holme House, Leicester, Wandsworth and Whitemoor top the table with four suicides each.
- 44% of the 92 prisoners were unsentenced, either on remand or awaiting sentence after conviction.
• The vast majority of self-inflicted deaths, 74 of the 92, were caused by hanging. Another seven prisoners strangled themselves using ligatures. Other methods of suicide included electrocution, smoke inhalation and serious self-harm.
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