UK: 22 prison officers charged
01 May 1999
Twenty-two prison officers from Wormwood Scrubs prison, west London, were charged with assaulting inmates at the end of June, and more charges are expected. The new director-general of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, announced on 16 June that there, "is sufficient evidence to charge 25 prison officers from Wormwood Scrubs with offences relating to assaults on prisoners." An investigation into the ill-treatment of inmates at the prison was launched after solicitors Hickman and Rose compiled a dossier of abuse and beatings and a police investigation, which has taken two years, followed. Thirteen other cases of brutality, involving prison officers and a prison doctor, are under investigation (see Statewatch vol 8, nos 2, 3 & 4 & 5, vol 9 no 1).
Narey recently told a Prison Officers Association conference that he believed that only a small number of prison officers were responsible for the abuses:
They do not treat prisoners and visitors with dignity. Sometimes they abuse prisoners. However small their number they are doing irreparable damage to your profession.
The director general, as well as Prisons Minister, Lord Williams, said that they will resign if the prison cannot be "turned around" within a year.
Their statements preceded the publication, in June, of a damning report by the Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham, who criticised flawed management practices, involving senior staff at the prison, including a former director-general, turning a "blind-eye" to the systematic abuse, frequent racial abuse and intimidation of inmates who are being denied their statutory rights. Recommendations made in previous inspections had either been ignored or flouted at this "evil" and "rotten" prison.
The publication of allegations contained in the Hickman-Rose dossier led to a series of walkouts by prison officers who complained that the inmates were "the scum of the earth". At one point more than 100 prison officers called in sick and stayed off work, protesting that members of staff had been breaking down in tears at the allegations made against them.
HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs: report of an unannounced inspection 8-12 March 1999 (Home Office) 1999, pp182; Prison Service press release 16.6.99; The Prison Service of England and Wales website:
link; Independent 1 & 16.6.99; Guardian 16 & 26.6.99; Times 26.6.99.