I work in a restricted status women's prison AMA

[QuaintBeaker]

You can ask me anything but I'm not going to name the prison and I'm not able to comment on individual prisoners (including/especially high profile ones).

What does restricted status mean, particularly in terms of how it affects the prisoners’ everyday lives?

Do you think all prison officers in women's prisons should be female? If not why not?

Essentially it's the same as a category A status, so the highest level of security.

In terms of day to day life, they have a separate housing block to the other sentenced and remand prisoners but ultimately it's very similar to all other prisoners.
I think it really only has a bigger effect if they're being taken out of the prison for court etc as they will have a higher level of security

This is a really good question actually. The majority of our officers are female, and we will always provide a female officer of someone requests one even if it means bringing someone over from a different area of the prison.

A lot of the women get on well with the male officers though and general consensus appears to be that the male officers get less flack (apparently this is also the case vice versa in men's prisons)

I don't think they should all be female. I do think that they need to be very carefully vetted and supervised though.

Is it like prisoner cell block H with "Top Dogs"

Can you describe an average day for a prisoner please?
From what time they get up to when they go to sleep.
Thank you

I would be lying if I said there was never manipulation by some women over others. But no, in general it isn't really like that.

A very high proportion of our women are either remand prisoners (so they've been denied bail and are waiting for court) or they are on recall which means they are only there for 56 days. The high turnover means there is less opportunity for hierarchies to form i guess!

It is something that we are trained to look out for though particularly in terms of more vulnerable women being taken advantage of

Thanks for replying

Is there enough support in prisons to rehabilitate someone so they don’t end up back in the system?

Do high profile prisoners, such as whole of life ones, revel in their status, or does it make them a target?

Do you have any feel for what proportion of the women are there because of men? I mean they were being controlled and coerced rather than choosing to commit criminal acts.

To what extent do rehabilitation measures address the problem of female convicts being controlled and/or coerced by males on whom they depend or who have the power to stop them from changing their lives, even if they want to?

What's Mothers Day like?

How did you end up in your role?
is it something you always wanted to do or was it accidental? Have you also worked in the male prison system.
Also thanks for the AMA, very interesting.

They are woken up around 7-7.30 i believe (I don't come in till later lol) and they are all counted.

Each houseblock has a canteen and they will go there to get their breakfast.

They have timetables, much like school i guess, and they can access this on the digital system.
Their timetable will consist of education, work and leisure activities. They generally choose these. Education is offered as soon as possible when they come in, because we know lack of education is a huge barrier to moving on once they are released.

So they'll have opportunities to do English and maths functional skills and various other things. They can also work in the bike repair shop, and learn things like hairdressing.
They can apply for jobs in the prison in the canteen, cleaning, gardening, in the gym and stuff.

Their timetable will also include medical appointments and visits.

They have time in the yard mid morning.

Lunch is 12.30 and again they'll go to their canteen for that.

After lunch is either more classes, visits from family and friends, access to gym etc
They'll have another bit of time in the yard mid afternoon.

5.30pm is dinner time. Back to the canteen!

Evening lock up is 8.30 following another headcount. Lights out by 10.30

What level of violence is there day to day, from prisoners towards each other or from prisoners towards staff?

No. And it's also difficult with some people to get them to engage. Some just don't want to or aren't ready to.

I think there are lots of opportunities provided in terms of education and learning skills for life. We also work with their community probation practitioners to try and ensure continuity of care when they leave.

I think what is lacking is psychological help though. I would say the vast majority are there with mental health issues and substance misuse issues. And the self medicating won't stop until the underlying issues are dealt with.

The other problem is that on release they are sent back to the area they came with and it's very easy to fall back into the lifestyle, particularly if they have no accommodation and no job!

Many many many women come in over and over again

No, day to day they generally just get on with life tbh
Some will avoid coming out of their cells very much because they fear the response they may get, which is understandable.

So i guess to some extent maybe both things apply but it's maybe less extreme than you'd think?

I'm going to say a large proportion have experienced DA (it's around 60% uk-wide) but I'm not sure that many are there due to being coerced into offending.

More often they co-offend to fund drug habits.

It's a really interesting question though, and I'm going to be thinking about it more in my interactions with prisoners

There are organisations that work within the prison to offer DV support. It's much like the outside world though, in as much as, you can inform and support a huge amount but they will often not be ready to leave yet.

Ultimately, we can support with advice and finding alternative housing and helping apply for restraining orders and things, but when they get out they are free to go back to them and there isn't much we can do. It's soul destroying!

There is a particular woman who is being released relatively soon and I was really glad to see her partner is currently serving a long prison term. And I hope that this gives her the opportunity to really disentangle her life from him.

Like most other days tbh.
Obviously some will have visits from their kids, but a lot won't- either because they've been taken into care or because they're with family who don't want them to go to the prison or because the women themselves don't want the kids to see them there.

So it can be upsetting for a lot of them

What’s your job?

I started working for the probation service in the court team because it related to my degree (psychology and law).
I then switched over to the probation team in prison.

I have yet to experience the male prison system! But I would like to, I've heard it's very different

This varies a lot depending on who is in.
It is lower than I thought it would be when I first came in though.
I would say there's more self harm than violence towards others.

Arguments between prisoners are shut down pretty quickly in general, before anything gets violent.

I work for the probation service and I'm part of the pre-release team.