UK: Disgrace of woman's..
01 May 1998
A 41-year old female remand prisoner, who was deprived of food and drink for 24 hours and refused access to a toilet or washing facilities for 48 hours, has had her complaint against the Prison Service upheld. The prisons Ombudsman, Sir Peter Woodhead, in his third annual report published at the beginning of July, described her treatment after being held in an unfurnished cell in "intolerable conditions" for an entire weekend as "humiliating, degrading and inhumane". In the introduction to his report he described it as: "...one of the worst cases of maltreatment by prison staff I have seen." He found it disturbing that, although the facts were accepted by the Prison Service, no disciplinary action was taken against any of the staff involved.
The prisoner was held at Risley prison in Cheshire and had been transferred to the segregation unit after a piece of metal was found to be missing from her cell. After refusing to wear a canvas "strip" dress in place of her own clothes she wrapped herself in a blanket and, as a consequence, staff refused to allow her food and drink and the opportunity to use toilet or washing facilities. The woman, who was menstruating at the time, was reduced to using a paper cup to urinate into in the absence of even a chamber pot in the cell.
The Ombudsman has called for the Prison Service to conduct "an investigation into the actions of the staff involved in this case with a view to considering whether such actions might form the basis of disciplinary charges." Two members of staff had "received advice" about the incident. Woodhead also requested the director general of the Prison Service, Richard Tilt, to make a personal apology to the woman. Tilt refused, but asked one of his staff to apologise on his behalf.
The 1997 annual report also criticises the handling of issues surrounding strip searching. In one case a prisoner had been "unnecessarily strip-searched twice within a matter of minutes of his arrival at the prison" (Case No. 11595/97). In another case (Case No. 11237/97) a prisoner had been ordered to carry out what amounted "to an intimate body search on himself." The report also lambasts the Prison Service's internal complaints system and notes that officers failed to investigate claims. He warned that: "The Prison Service ignores at its peril the finding of Lord Woolf, in his inquiry into the prison disturbances of April 1990, that one of the root causes of the riots was that prisoners believed that they had no effective method of ventilating their grievances." The Ombudsman received nearly 2000 complaints which resulted in 553 investigations. He upheld 44% of the complaints investigated.
Prison Ombudsman Annual Report 1997 (July 1998) HMSO (Cm 3984); Home Office press release 2.7.98; Independent 3.7.98.