FRFI 186 August / September 2005
On 11 March 2004, 32-year-old Arif Hussain died in the segregation unit of Full Sutton prison. In June 2005, an inquest jury at Hull Crown Court recorded that his death was an accident, due to his ingesting heroin received on a visit seven days before his death. They also recorded that there were defects in the system that materially contributed to his death. Among those they listed a lack of resources and a lack of appropriate protocol and power to deal with suspected drug ingestion. ERIC ALLISON attended the inquest.
The jury was shown a video of a visit on 4 March 2004. It was clear that something was passed to and with difficulty swallowed by Arif. He was taken from the visit and strip-searched. Nothing was found. He was taken to the segregation unit. A week later he was dead.
The inquest lasted eight days and the majority of this time was taken up with the accounts of members of staff – dozens of them: prison officers, psychiatrists and members of medical staff. Everyone who had worked in the seg that week gave evidence. Even their accounts, biased as they were towards exonerating the system, revealed serious inadequacies in Arif’s treatment; however two things were missing from the inquest. The first was the detailed evidence of prisoners who had been in the segregation unit and who had seen that during the last week of his life Arif Hussain was not merely neglected but abused and tormented. The second was an informed and robust cross-examination of witnesses and presentation of the evidence to the jury in a way that might cause it to seriously question the circumstances around Arif’s death and produce a detailed narrative verdict.
What emerged from the prison staff accounts was that Arif had been a ‘difficult’ prisoner. Hardly surprising, given he was a disturbed young man at the best of times. The consultant psychiatrist at the prison said he had treated Arif as ‘mentally ill’, and that was before he went down the block. He said that his patient was depressive and a crack cocaine addict.
The inquest learnt Arif had complained of feeling ill all week, had kept other prisoners awake every night with his cries, and had allegedly thrown a cup of water over a screw, been restrained and taken to the strip cell.
We were told that every day staff asked Arif to ‘give up his parcel’ and that he replied that he would if staff gave him his tobacco. He was told that he would only get his tobacco after he had given his parcel up. We learned that Arif was in the habit of barking at prison dogs and that the seg unit log recorded that on the night he died he was screaming that there were prostitutes in his cell. All this, from a man who was regarded as mentally ill and who was almost certainly known to have swallowed a sizeable amount of heroin.
But no one took any action. Professor Alexander Forrest, a leading forensic toxicologist, attested that if six hours before his death Arif had been in hospital with nursing and monitoring he would, ‘Have been more, rather than less, likely to have survived.’
The staff didn’t entirely ignore Arif – they did not help him or try to comfort him, but they logged his actions. These are some entries from that log. ‘Hussain is a total pain in the arse’. ‘There is something seriously wrong with this individual, everyone getting on at him. Could be an interesting day.’ ‘Hussain at it again. Lots of unhappy teddy bears.’
We learned Full Sutton had carried out an internal inquiry into the inappropriate remarks in the log and other matters, and that some staff had been ‘spoken to’ about their behaviour. Presumably those ‘spoken to’ included the officer who logged that he had checked on Arif five times during his last night. The CCTV recording showed that those checks did not take place.
Segregation unit solidarity
After Arif’s death, some prisoners were so incensed at his treatment that they smashed up their cells. Some were then removed to other prisons. Nearly every single one then gave statements to the coroner’s inquiry, many containing serious allegations of abuse of Arif Hussain by prison staff.
Almost 30 prisoners indicated that they were willing to give evidence at the inquest. Just four were called, including the segregation unit cleaner who, surprise, surprise, like every seg cleaner, thought that all the staff were wonderful (that is how they get their jobs).
One of the only three prisoners called to give evidence of the abuse was Murat Mavrici, who was brought from Whitemoor and made to stand behind a bullet-proof security screen, in the dock rather than the witness box. Despite this intimidation, Mavrici delivered a harrowing account of Arif’s treatment, starting when Arif told him there was no water in his cell. He said that staff refused to give Arif food all day because he ‘did not put a chair in the right position in his cell’. He said Arif was constantly banging on his door and yelling that he was in pain, while staff were eating biscuits outside Arif’s door, taunting him and calling him a ‘fat bastard’. He rang his own bell and told staff that Arif needed help. He was told to mind his own business.
Another prisoner, Craig Smith, told the court that the night he died Arif was shouting ‘I need a doctor’, that he ‘could not see’ and had pains in his chest.
Where were the rest and why were they not called to speak when every member of staff who had been anywhere near the seg was there? Where was Dean Lowe, who had been released and was willing to travel, who had written after Arif’s death that his last night on earth was, ‘spent without dignity’; that all night Arif had been making a noise that, ‘was a cross between vomiting and growling or crying’ and that those cries were ‘ignored by night staff’?
Kevin Nevers, who was in the cell opposite Arif, had told the coroner’s inquiry team that two days before he died, Arif was beaten up in his cell by six or seven staff after he had spat at
a doctor. He said that Arif had been ‘begging staff for help’ and that on his last night complained that he was losing his sight. Kevin maintained that staff had repeatedly taunted Arif during his last days, calling him a ‘fat Paki’ and ‘a terrorist’.
Legal representation
It seems that the witness list was drawn up by the coroner, counsel for the Prison Service and counsel for Arif’s family. It is understandable that counsel for the Prison Service would not want too many prisoners saying nasty things about staff, but why did the family’s side stand for it?
Following every death in prison, staff are supposed to notify relatives of the existence of the campaigning and support organisation Inquest. Prison Service Order 2710 ‘Follow Up to Deaths in Custody’ clearly states:
‘…the leaflet prepared by the organisation Inquest, in conjunction with the Prison Service, will be of help and is to be forwarded to the family at the earliest opportunity.’
When this actually happens, Inquest gets solicitors and barristers who are familiar with the prison system. This usually results in a lot of the truth coming out. Witness, for example, the inquest into the death of Paul Day in Frankland (see FRFI 184) or most of those involving the six women who died, in the course of one year, at Styal Prison.
Arif’s family were not told about Inquest. Of course they had never had to deal with a terrible situation like this before and had no idea where to turn. They therefore instructed Arif’s criminal solicitor to represent them. It seems he had little experience of inquests. The barrister he briefed appeared to have limited knowledge of the prison system. Consequently he asked virtually no searching questions of any witness, and chose not to speak to the prisoner witnesses before they gave evidence.
And so, in the case of Arif Hussain, who died in agony, coughing up blood and excrement, the jury returned a verdict as weak as prison tea used to be. Staff at Full Sutton, who had expected a rough ride, had a smooth time of it.
In the last 18 months, I have attended many inquests into deaths in custody. In my view, the death of Arif Hussain was by far the most avoidable. This year, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, intends to carry out a ‘Thematic Review’ of segregation units in the dispersal system. She should start, I suggest, with the block at Full Sutton.
Wakefield brutality exposed
A former senior prison officer at Wakefield prison was hounded out of her job after complaining to senior management that prison staff regularly bullied and intimidated prisoners and conspired to foment violence among them.
Carol Lingard told an employment tribunal at which she won her case that within 48 hours of complaining to governors she was ostracised and verbally abused by colleagues – ‘work became a very unsafe environment and I was made to feel that I was going to be made to pay for blowing the whistle.’
The tribunal condemned Prison Service management, including governor John Slater, deputy Colin Blakeman and Prison Service Deputy Director General Peter Atherton, for whitewashing investigations into Lingard’s complaints and attempting to silence her by medically retiring her. Their behaviour was described as ‘startling and disturbing’ and dishonest beyond belief.
If the prison system treats its own in this way, one can only imagine the degree of abuse and victimisation prisoners experience when they complain about staff behaviour.
Six years ago a group of prison officers were imprisoned following a sustained reign of terror at Wormwood Scrubs. Martin Narey, then Prison Service Director General, was forced to publicly state his determination to root out and punish such behaviour. The case of Carol Lingard shows that neither Narey nor anyone else in Prison Service headquarters has lifted a finger to prevent prison staff abusing and brutalising prisoners.
John Bowden, HMP Saughton
Prisoner wins compensation for unlawful segregation
Life sentence prisoner Kenny Carter, who was unlawfully segregated on more than one occasion between 1997 and 1999, while on the controversial Continuous Assessment Scheme (CAS), has won a record £8,500 damages.
The CAS was set up to deal with prisoners regarded as disruptive. They were removed from normal location, placed in segregation, and moved every 28 days between high security prison seg units. As a result, it was almost impossible to maintain family contact, let alone personal relationships. By the time prisoners notified loved ones of their location they would be moving again. Visiting was out of the question and even receiving mail a lengthy affair. In effect the scheme was designed to wear prisoners down.
Although the Directorate of High Security Prisons managed CAS prisoners, normal segregation procedures still had to be adhered to. This meant when a prisoner arrived at a new prison, he was entitled to see the Board of Visitors (BOV) and receive written reasons for his continued segregation. Some prisons tended to overlook this, using the very fact the prisoner was on the CAS as evidence of their unsuitability for normal location.
Kenny Carter’s claim centred around periods when he was not seen or signed on by either a governor or the BOV, and when his segregation was therefore unlawful. He also claimed he suffered psychiatric injury, in particular adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance of emotions. The psychological results of the unlawful segregation were also said to have contributed to his developing post-traumatic stress disorder.
John Shelley, HMP Long Lartin
