A jury at Northampton Crown Court has heard that a prisoner at privately-run Rye Hill prison committed suicide less than three weeks after making serious allegations of corruption against five officers. Three former members of staff are charged with manslaughter by gross neglect. One of them, along with another ex-officer, is charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice. It is believed to be the first time in over 30 years that prison staff have stood trial in connection with the death of a prisoner. Eric Allison reports.
The court heard from the prosecution that in March 2005, 23-year-old Michael Bailey from Birmingham was found hanging in his cell in the segregation unit at Rye Hill prison near Coventry. He was on suicide watch following a rapid decline in his mental state which began shortly after being put in segregation.
The former Director of Operations at Rye Hill, Steve Hepworth, told the court that he had an hour-long meeting with Michael Bailey after he had made the allegations against staff. Bailey had been ‘very coherent, switched-on, confident and articulate’. However, when the two men met again two weeks later in the segregation unit, he had become a ‘frightened, incoherent figure who mumbled away while sat on his bed’. Under cross-examination, Hepworth conceded that Bailey would have been vulnerable if information about his allegation of corruption had got out. He agreed Bailey had passed on ‘highly sensitive information that, if correct, would implicate prison officers in criminal conduct’ and that a move to another prison should have been considered.
The court was also told that at the time of Michael Bailey’s death, senior management at Rye Hill were investigating 25 separate intelligence reports relating to trafficking or other inappropriate behaviour by prison staff.
Dan Daymond, Paul Smith and Samantha Prime are charged with the manslaughter of Michael Bailey. The thrust of the prosecution’s case is that they ignored the warning signs in the days leading up to his death. On one occasion he stripped naked in the exercise yard and walked around reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Another time he told a member of staff that he was ready to be baptised and to die.
Michael’s mother, Caroline, visited her son two days before he died. She told the court that Michael was normally a self-confident and positive young man who took care of his appearance but had not showered or changed his clothes for a week. There were cuts and scars on his chest and neck which Michael told her were self-inflicted. He said he had tried to commit suicide using a string tied around his neck but that the noose had broken under his weight. Ms Bailey said that her son was in a highly emotional state on the visit, repeatedly bursting into tears and saying that staff had told him that his family were dead.
Later that evening she telephoned the prison and passed on her concerns to Samantha Prime, who worked on Edwards wing, where Michael was held before going to the segregation unit. In police interviews, Prime denied the conversation took place.
The prosecution told the jury that if Ms Bailey had told Samantha Prime about the marks on Michael’s neck and his admission of self-harm and the officer had done nothing about it this would amount to gross negligence.
The jury heard that Bailey was placed in a cell containing a ligature point and was allowed to keep his shoelaces and that although the staff were supposed to carry out daily ‘fabric checks’ on all cells, the one where Bailey died had not been checked for weeks. The jury was told that the failure of Paul Smith, the segregation unit manager, to order these checks and to organise proper suicide watch checks amounted to gross negligence on his part.
Prosecuting counsel, Rachel Brand QC said that Bailey should have been checked six times an hour by staff but, when he was found dead at 12 noon on 24 March 2005, nobody had seen him for an hour. He had been found hanging by a ligature formed by a shoelace, threaded through a hole in a metal panel on the inside of his door. Ms Brand said that there was no doubt that he had taken his own life but that he had been failed by prison staff, whose duty was to safeguard him, particularly with their knowledge of his mental state. Without their gross negligence, if they had done their duties fully and properly, Michael Bailey would not have been able to take his own life.
Ms Brand said that after the alarm was raised, custody officer Dan Daymond told his colleague, Ben King, to forge entries in the Suicide and Self-Harm Book. King is then said to have falsely entered the times 11.09, 11.17, 11.30 and 11.45 in the book with the words: ‘in cell’.
As the trial continues, prison staff appear to be relying on the defence that Global Solutions Ltd (GSL), the private company that runs Rye Hill, is to blame, rather than they as individuals, as they were not properly trained to do their jobs. The jury was told by defence counsel that a month after Bailey’s death the Chief Inspector of Prisons visited Rye Hill and found that most officers were ‘fairly new and young’ with ‘far less experience of jail than the long-term prisoners in their care’. The inspectorate had voiced very serious concerns about safety at the prison and had singled out the ‘below standard’ monitoring of prisoners regarded as being at risk of suicide or self-harm.
The barrister representing former prison guard Paul Smith told the jury that despite Rye Hill having a policy dictating that staff should have a minimum of a year’s experience before working in the segregation unit, in early 2005 three virtually untrained staff were on the unit at the Warwickshire prison: one had only two months post-training experience; another had been an operational officer for 16 days and the third had not received his Home Office security clearance.
GSL is a massive corporation which runs prisons, immigration detention centres, prisoner escort services and a myriad of related projects. In Britain it manages Rye Hill, Altcourse and The Wolds (criminal prisons for adult males), Yarl’s Wood, Campsfield House, Tinsley House and Oakington (immigration prisons), Medway and Rainsbrook Secure Training Centres (prisons for children). It also runs prisons and detention centres in Australia, South Africa and on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. GSL has a 25-year £35m PFI contract to design, build, finance and operate Manchester Magistrates Court and a £400m 30-year contract to construct and service the new GCHQ government spy building in Cheltenham. It should indeed be held to account for the death of Michael Bailey, along with those of all the prisoners and detainees who have died in its establishments. However this does not mean that the individuals who brutalise or neglect prisoners and then blame their bosses should be able to wipe their hands and walk away.
From Wormwood Scrubs to Abu Ghraib, on the all-too rare occasions in which the state is compelled to prosecute its own for crimes against the oppressed, the fall-out is similar: the little people blame those at the top and those at the top keep their distance. The staff from Rye Hill are right to blame a multi-million pound corporation for exploiting both them and prisoners like Michael Bailey to make a fat profit, but this does not exonerate them for their own indifference and neglect. Custody officers who do nothing to prevent deaths of prisoners should be on trial but they should not be alone in the dock.
FRFI 196 April / May 2007
