Scarlett Roberts’ diary of her four months inside a women’s jail last year is a rare and shocking account of mostly male prison officers allegedly abusing their power over women.
One extract reads: “14th of May, cell 19 after lunch at 12:30. Two officers were arguing with her. She was not violent… There were seven officers in the end, all restraining her in her cell. No officers put bodycams on. One officer kicked her in the chest.”
Her account details the alleged treatment of a youth offender in a cell next door.
Scarlett recalls: “They folded her in two, they brought her arms up behind her back until she was screaming. Then the senior officer kicked her in the chest right before they closed the door. They didn’t let her out for 48 hours.”
She is choosing to speak out about her experience despite the stigma of being a former prisoner.
Her testimony comes on the day a government report into women’s prisons makes eight recommendations that recognise that the Prison Service currently does not offer the support needed for women.
It comes as self-harm rates among female prisoners continue to soar – up 63% this year according to the latest government “safety in custody” statistics.
Image: Scarlett tells Sky News the conditions at HMP Eastwood Park were ‘inhuman’. Pic: Andy Portch
Officers showed ‘no compassion’ to prisoners
Scarlett was jailed in HMP Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire for perverting the course of justice.
An inspectorate report of the jail earlier this year said levels of self-harm there were “the highest of all women’s prisons”.
It also noted two recent self-inflicted deaths – with two more yet-to-be-classified deaths mentioned in a progress report this September.
Scarlett says conditions in the jail are “not fit for purpose” to ensure the safety and rehabilitation of women prisoners.
She alleges that male staff used disproportionate force against women prisoners to keep them in check and they would also withdraw meals or medical attention as punishment for troublemakers.
She said prisoner self-harm was rife and officers showed no compassion.
“One lady had self-harmed significantly,” she recounts. “There was a lot of blood, and they didn’t dress the wound. They didn’t cover it up. She was bleeding and they gave her a bowl to bleed in. They were like, ‘there you go’.
“When they opened the door, she threw it in distress and as a result got days added on to her sentence.”
The inspectorate report published in February said Eastwood Park had extreme levels of self-harm, a lack of clinical supervision, and acute staff shortages.
It also stated: “The number of times force had been used against women had increased significantly and we were not confident it was always used as a last resort.”
The report added: “The cells were appalling, dilapidated and covered in graffiti, one was blood-splattered, and some had extensive scratches on the walls which reflected the degree of trauma previous residents must have experienced.
“No prisoner should be held in such conditions, let alone women who were acutely unwell and in great distress.”
Staff shortages meant women didn’t spend enough time out of their cells, the report also said.
Image: A cell door at HMP Eastwood Park. Pic: HM Inspectorate of Prisons
Prisoners ‘caged for 23 hours a day’
A subsequent progress report found limited improvements – but some things had gotten worse.
For example, the use of force had increased in the last 10 months.
The conditions are “so inhuman”, Scarlett said.
She added: “You are caged for 23 hours a day – and that’s if there is enough staff to let you out even for one hour. So many days they were like ‘we don’t have enough staff, so no one is getting out today’. And in a space I couldn’t even open my arms wide.”
Clothes and sanitary products also seemed to be in short supply.
Scarlett says she didn’t have underwear for weeks, and had little help from the officer on call when she had her period.
She told Sky News: “He just didn’t know what a tampon was. So, I had to explain to him what they were and then he came back with big sanitary pads and then I had to explain I’m not wearing any underwear.”
Image: Scarlett Roberts was jailed for perverting the course of justice. Pic: Andy Portch
‘You’re watching your life fall apart’
Scarlett is now an exercise physiologist and founded Red: Redemption CIC to provide movement for mental health services for those at risk of self-medication, self-harm and suicidal behaviours.
She’s also written a blog about her experience.
She described how her mental health deteriorated during her four months of incarceration, and you can almost see it illustrated in the way she crossed off the days in her pocket calendar with increasing pressure in the strokes – the last pages are multiple thick lines.
Scarlett said: “Prison should be like a scaffolding is to a building – that it’s a structure, a temporary structure, to help you build a better life for when you come out.
“Instead, it’s a cage – being put in the crumbling building – you’re watching your life fall apart.
“I mean there’s nothing you can do. And then one day you are released, and you are just in the rubble.”
Commenting on this interview, a Prison Service spokesperson said: “Custody is a last resort for women and the number of women in prison has fallen by a quarter since 2010.
“We are investing up to £14m to improve the safety and rehabilitation of women so they can turn their backs on crime for good – including specialist self-harm training for staff, improved mental health services and help into work on release.”
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But the government report published by NHS England on Thursday admitted “the prison environment is experienced as unfit for purpose by many women and health and social care providers”.
It recommends a number of measures including “providing specialist care, support and treatment for women that meet their unique needs, including for example pregnancy and the menopause“.
Recognising that a high number of women in prison are vulnerable and living with trauma, it says the service needs to improve access to services such as talking therapies, and acknowledges prisons are ill-equipped to provide the necessary treatment and care for acutely mentally ill women.
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‘A lot of prisons not fit for purpose’
Scarlett believes a much more radical overhaul is needed, including a review of what she describes as an “us and them” relationship between the prison officers and the inmates.
She says: “It’s right to remove people’s freedoms – but a judge does that. That’s what he did with me – he removed my freedom for a period of time – that’s my punishment.
“It is not other people’s job to further punish you by weaponising access to basic necessities – such as healthcare, food – because they see fit or because they personally want to.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK.
You know bad economic news is looming when a Chancellor of the Exchequer tries to get their retaliation in first.
Treasury guidance on Tuesday afternoon that Rachel Reeves has prioritised easing the cost of living had to be seen in the light of inflation figures, published this morning, and widely expected to rise above 4% for the first time since the aftermath of the energy crisis.
In that context the fact consumer price inflation in September remained level at 3.8% counts as qualified good news for the Treasury, if not consumers.
The figure remains almost double the Bank of England target of 2%, the rate when Labour took office, but economists at the Bank and beyond do expect this month to mark the peak of this inflationary cycle.
That’s largely because the impact of higher energy prices last year will drop out of calculations next month.
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Inflation sticks at 3.8%
The small surprise to the upside has also improved the chances of an interest rate cut before the end of the year, with markets almost fully pricing expectations of a reduction to 3.75% by December, though rate-setters may hold off at their next meeting early next month.
September’s figure also sets the uplift in benefits from next April so this figure may improve the internal Treasury forecast, but at more than double the rate a year ago it will still add billions to the bill due in the new year.
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Minister ‘not happy with inflation’
For consumers there was good news and bad, and no comfort at all from the knowledge that they face the highest price increases in Europe.
Fuel prices rose but there was welcome relief from the rate of food inflation, which fell to 4.5% from 5.1% in August, still well above the headline rate and an unavoidable cost increase for every household.
The chancellor will convene a meeting of cabinet ministers on Thursday to discuss ways to ease the cost of living and has signalled that cutting energy bills is a priority.
The easiest lever for her to pull is to cut the VAT rate on gas and electricity from 5% to zero, which would reduce average bills by around £80 but cost £2.5bn.
More fundamental reform of energy prices, which remain the second-highest in Europe for domestic bill payers and the highest for industrial users, may be required to bring down inflation fast and stimulate growth.
Schools need to be “brave enough” to talk about knives, Sky News has been told, as the killer of Sheffield teenager Harvey Willgoose is sentenced today.
His killer, who was also 15 and cannot be identified for legal reasons, had brought a 13cm hunting knife into school.
Image: Harvey Willgoose. Pic: Sophie Willgoose
Following Harvey’s murder, his parents Caroline and Mark Willgoose told Sky News they wanted to see knife arches in “all secondary schools and colleges”.
“It’s 100% a conversation, I think, that we need to be empowered and brave enough to have,” says Katie Crook, associate vice principal of Penistone Grammar School.
The school, which teaches 2,000 pupils, is just a few miles away from where Harvey was killed.
After being contacted by the Willgoose family, it has decided to install a knife arch.
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The arch – essentially a walk-through metal detector – has been described as a “reassuring tool” and “real success” by school leaders.
“We’re really lucky here that we don’t have a knife crime problem – but we are on the forefront with safeguarding initiatives,” says Mrs Crook.
“I didn’t really think we needed one at first,” says Izzy, 14. “But then I guess at Harvey’s school they wouldn’t think that either and then it did actually happen.”
Joe, 15, says he did find the knife arch “intimidating” at first.
“But after using it a couple of times,” he says, “it’s just like walking through a doorway”.
“And it’s that extra layer of, like, you feel secure in school.”
After Harvey’s death, then home secretary Yvette Cooper said that she would support schools in the use of knife arches.
But there remains no official government policy or national guidance on their use.
Some headteachers who spoke with Sky News feel knife arches aren’t the answer – saying the issue required a societal approach.
Others said knife arches themselves were a significant expense to schools.
But Mrs Crook says they are “well worth the funding” if they prevent “a student making a catastrophic decision”.
“I’m a parent and, of course, my focus every day is keeping our students safe, just as I want my son to be kept safe in his setting and his school.”
Mrs Crook says she thinks schools would “welcome” a discussion at “national level” about the use of knife arches and other knife-related deterrents in schools.
“It’s sad, though that this is what it’s come to, that we’re having lockdown drills in the UK, in our school settings.
“But I suppose some might argue that has been needed for a long time.”
If you eat beef, and ever stop to wonder where and how it’s produced, Jonathan Chapman’s farm in the Chiltern Hills west of London is what you might imagine.
A small native herd, eating only the pasture beneath their hooves in a meadow fringed by beech trees, their leaves turning to match the copper coats of the Ruby Red Devons, selected for slaughter only after fattening naturally during a contented if short existence.
But this bucolic scene belies the turmoil in the beef market, where herds are shrinking, costs are rising, and even the promise of the highest prices in years, driven by the steepest price increase of any foodstuff, is not enough to tempt many farmers to invest.
For centuries, a symbolic staple of the British lunch table, beef now tells us a story about spiralling inflation and structural decline in agriculture.
Mr Chapman has been raising beef for just over a decade. A former champion eventing rider with a livery yard near Chalfont St Giles, the main challenge when he shifted his attention from horses to cows was that prices were too low.
“Ten years ago, the deadweight carcass price for beef was £3.60 a kilo. We might clear £60 a head of cattle,” he says. “The only way we could make the sums add up was to process and sell the meat ourselves.”
Processing a carcass doubles the revenue, from around £2,000 at today’s prices to £4,000. That insight saw his farm sprout a butchery and farm shop under the Native Beef brand. Today, they process two animals a week and sell or store every cut on site, from fillet to dripping.
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Today, farmgate prices are nearly double what they were in 2015 at £6.50 a kilo, down slightly from the April peak of almost £7, but still up around 25% in a year.
For consumers that has made paying more than £5 for a pack of mince the norm. For farmers, rising prices reflect rising costs, long-term trends, and structural changes to the subsidy regime since Brexit.
“Supply and demand is the short answer,” says Mr Chapman.
“Cow numbers have been falling roughly 3% a year for the last decade, probably in this country. Since Brexit, there is virtually no direct support for food in this country. Well over 50% of the beef supply would have come from the dairy herd, but that’s been reducing because farmers just couldn’t make money.”
Political, environmental and economic forces
Beef farmers also face the same costs of trading as every other business. The rise in employers’ national insurance and the minimum wage have increased labour costs, and energy prices remain above the long-term average.
Then there is the weather, the inescapable variable in agriculture that this year delivered a historically dry summer, leaving pastures dormant, reducing hay and silage yields and forcing up feed costs.
Native Beef is not immune to these forces. Mr Chapman has reduced his suckler herd from 110 to 90, culling older cows to reduce costs this winter. If repeated nationally, the full impact of that reduction will only be fully clear in three years’ time, when fewer calves will reach maturity for sale, potentially keeping prices high.
That lag demonstrates one of the challenges in bringing prices down.
Basic economics says high prices ought to provide an opportunity and prompt increased supply, but there is no quick fix. Calves take nine months to gestate and another 20 to 24 months to reach maturity, and without certainty about price, there is greater risk.
There is another long-term issue weighing on farmers of all kinds: inheritance tax. The ending of the exemption for agriculture, announced in the last budget and due to be imposed from next April, has undermined confidence.
Neil Shand of the National Beef Association cites farmers who are spending what available capital they have on expensive life insurance to protect their estates, rather than expanding their herds.
“The farmgate price is such that we should be in an environment that we should be in a great place to expand, there is a market there that wants the product,” he says. “But the inheritance tax challenge has made everyone terrified to invest in something that will be more heavily taxed in the future.”
While some of the issues are domestic, the UK is not alone.
Beef prices are rising in the US and Europe too, but that is small consolation to the consumer, and none at all to the cow.