My name is Pauline Day and I am the mother of Paul Day who tragically took his own life in Frankland prison segregation unit on 2 October 2002. On 7 December 2005 Paul was the subject of a television documentary on Channel Five. The programme showed harrowing footage of a video taken by prison officers of Paul being moved off of a dirty protest on the last day of his life.
I hope that at least some of you viewed this documentary. For those who did not, please believe me when I tell you that I have seen the complete footage and Paul’s treatment on the last day of his life was tantamount to serious psychological torture.
Paul had been, and still was, on suicide watch. The video shows him being instructed by prison officers ‘not to say a word, or we will restrain you’. Several other orders follow, but he is refused the right to speak to the prison officers. He is waded through a flooded corridor and up stairs which are also flooded. Then, having been showered, he is waded back through human excrement and urine on to the same segregation spur he was taken from, and then put into another cell. A Perspex screen is fastened over the cell door and held there with eight-foot blocks of wood. Prison officers at the inquest described how they had to tear these wooden battens down with their bare hands to get to Paul when he was discovered hanging. Nobody seems to know exactly what time Paul died. But one thing is certain, the time it would have taken to remove these battens which were deliberately wedged against his cell door and the wall opposite his cell and then to have to strip the Perspex away and unlock the door, would have created a serious delay in reaching Paul. I wonder if there would have been any hope of resuscitation had there not been this delay in reaching him.
My husband Andy and I attended every day of the four-and-a-half week inquest into Paul’s death. We worked closely with Bruce Jones, the journalist who made the Channel Five programme. We have met with the Prison Service and the Chief Inspector of Prisons. We have marched with the United Families and Friends Campaign and worked with the organisation Inquest. But it still remains a total mystery to us how a prisoner on suicide watch could be locked in a cell with access to what he would require to be able to hang himself. Having seen the actual cell in which he died I was unable to see any place where any ligature could be attached as there were no exposed bars, no pipes and the bed, being segregation, was of course a concrete slab. No one has ever offered any explanation as to how it was possible for Paul to hang himself. We therefore continue to ask questions, collect information from prisoners and work with any journalists or campaigners who are not afraid of taking on the system.
You can correspond with me via FRFI and I will answer each and every letter I receive.
Pauline Day
FRFI 189 February / March 2006
