‘Bedlam’: Allegations of toxic prison where inmates are goaded by staff

Warning: this report from our social affairs editor Jackie Long contains some offensive language.

“Bedlam, just totally out of control,” says Michael Roberts bluntly, when I ask about the state of Parc Prison.  “I’ve never felt so unsafe in a jail. No matter what jail I’ve been to, I’ve never felt that unsafe.”

And he should know. He’s been in and out of a raft of prisons almost his entire adult life.

He knows Parc itself very well too. He was one of the first prisoners sent there after the privately run Category B jail in Bridgend , south Wales, was first opened back in 1997. Convicted of attempted armed robbery in 2006 and given a controversial indeterminate sentence, Michael Roberts ended up back in Parc for his last jail stint – only leaving in May this year – and he now puts it top of a grim list of grimly problematic prisons.

Even at a point when the entire system is in crisis, Parc’s problems have been particularly acute. It’s had more inmate deaths than any other jail so far this year. At the end of May , the prison had to call in a specialist unit after a disturbance involving 20 prisoners – and separately violence left three inmates in hospital. And in the last fortnight South Wales police arrested four people on suspicion of assault and misconduct in public office after concerns were raised about staff conduct.

The crisis at Parc is no surprise to Michael Roberts. He points to a very specific problem at Parc, which is run by the security company G4S. A toxic culture where a group of officers, who like to call themselves “the heavy mob, goad prisoners, he claims, so they can then use control and restraint against them.

“What they’ll do is, they’ll use certain female officers to goad the prisoners. She goes off, does what she does, and then staff come in to ‘resolve’ the situation, which normally means, nine times out of ten, somebody ends up face down on the floor with their hands ripped up behind their backs. Sometimes I see certain force being used in the community, and then I see force being used in here, and I think, if I used that force out here I’d be facing criminal allegations or criminal charges. It just doesn’t make no sense to me.”

He claims it is targeted and tactical. And if you might expect a former prisoner to allege poor conduct from the men and women charged with keeping him incarcerated,  consider this from “Maxine”, a former prison officer at Parc, literally on the other side of the jail divide. We’ve changed her name to protect her identity. She backs Michael Roberts’ version of events entirely, also claiming she saw officers target often vulnerable prisoners so they could, in her words, “bend them up”, using control and restraint against them.

“They’d look for the challenging prisoners,” said Maxine. “If a prisoner, I mean we all have bad days, if a prisoner had been rude to them on previous days, then they were gunning for him then. They could come off other wings onto our wing and they would say, right, ‘oh we’re going for so and so, he needs to go into seg (segregation)… he was an asshole last week’. So they would go and they would goad that prisoner then just so they could bend him up. They’d love it.”

She said control and restraint in Parc was not always used properly, instead she said “they just want to hurt the prisoners”.

The Prison Officers Association continually remind their critics that officers face constant violence in jails across the country and are often left with no choice but to use control and restraint.

At Parc, Maxine says that “is rubbish. They – the prison officers – make the risks. They make the problems. They create the situations themselves”.

Michael Roberts says it all contributes to an explosive situation. “It makes it volatile. You got prisoners sat there on edge. You got prisoners who are agitated and angry towards certain members of staff. At the end of the day they’re human beings but if you’re going to treat them like dogs, eventually you will act up to your environment. And if the environment you’re living in is shit, you’re going to start acting like shit. Sorry for the language but that’s the reality of it.”

He has one more thing in common with former officer Maxine. Neither of them ever want to go back to Parc. Assaults at the jail almost doubled in the year to March, and according to the latest published figures it has an assault rate significantly above the average for a jail of its type, though G4S insists things are improving.

In a statement, a spokesperson for HMP Parc said: “While the vast majority of our staff are professional and caring, we remain absolutely committed to rooting out any wrongdoing. The safety and welfare of prisoners is our priority and we have strict procedures in place to monitor the use of force.”