Drugs, violence and hooch. What it’s like to be one of the UK’s youngest Prison Officers.

James is a 19-year-old Prison Officer, for privacy reasons this isn’t his real name. He works full time in a prison in the South West of England and has done for the last 6 months.

Within three days of starting, James dealt with his first fight. James and another guard had to take down a prisoner after he “took the senior prison officer by the throat and started hammering into him”. 

Prisoner’s resort to brewing hooch and using substances that are explicitly labelled as dangerous for human consumption to get a high. The prisoners take extreme risks, from using substances rat poison to smoking tea bags. Prisoners mix tomatoes, apples and pears with bread and place it next to the pipes in their cells in order to brew hooch. The alcohol percentage can vary anywhere from 2% to 80%, according to James. Hooch can be potentially life threatening and is removed from prisoners the moment it is spotted. 

When asked about prisoners, James said “they are still people”. He said that “I can trust them until the point that they break my trust”. As a whole most prisoners are well behaved with a huge amount being promoted to enhanced prisoners. Allowing them to apply for different jobs in the prison. 

Many prisoners in the main wing are reoffenders and will spend the rest of their lives in and out of prison. Speaking about why most prisoners are inside, James says that a lot of prisoners have simply had an awful upbringing and have had very little opportunity to do much with their lives. Some prisoners are intentionally in prison as it is safer and better than being on the streets. 

The prison James works at has prisoners with a range of convictions and sentences. The most common crimes are robbery/theft/burglary, assault and drugs. Those prisoners that reoffend often commit these more common crimes. 

Sex offenders are kept separate, these are often the prisoners that James would describe as evil. They often have very little guilt over their crimes. Surprisingly however, most murderers regret their crimes and are the least trouble especially as they regularly have the longest sentences. 

Prisoners that have committed drug related crimes are often the most dangerous as a huge amount of them are dealing with severe withdrawal symptoms and have been permanently damaged by their addictions.

Violence only really occurs in the prison over debt and occasionally racism. Any sex criminals that are not protected by the Vulnerable Persons Wing will be immediately assaulted. 

Rape of prisoners by other prisoners is also incredibly rare, James is not aware of any in his prison and is only aware of one homosexual relationship between cell mates in the prison’s recent history.

Being a Prison Officer is one of the best decisions he has ever made. James now has a better judge of character. He has experienced more in the first 6 months of his career than most have in their entire lives.