Assault, screaming and sensory overload: Inside HMP Elmley where ‘every day is unpredictable’

As we walked to one of the wings at HMP Elmley – there was screaming.

Persistent screaming from a prisoner.

He lifted up his top, revealing numerous scars across his body, and shouted: “This is what Elmley does to you! Self harm! This is what Elmley is doing!”

The rate of self harm in the male prison estate across England and Wales rose by 25% in the last year, so this isn’t uncommon. But quite quickly, it offered an evocative snapshot of life inside.

We went through security at about 7.45am on a weekday morning, before heading into a briefing with the governor about what to expect from our day at Elmley, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.

Just as she said the word “unpredictable”, an alarm went off. The duty governor’s walkie-talkie was buzzing. He left the room.

A member of staff had been violently assaulted during morning unlock.

The staff member was ok. But it was violent.

Officer Price, who manages the wing, told Sky News it’s symptomatic of tight conditions, particularly in the winter as the heating is on and the cells are hot.

“A lot of frustration builds up. It means there’s more chance of violence going up, of self harm going up, because they are spending so much time looking at the same four walls. One of my staff members got assaulted this morning – that is proof in the pudding,” he said.

At points here over the last six months they’ve had just four free cell spaces, operating at almost 100% capacity.

On Tuesday, the government is releasing another round of prisoners early in an effort to free up space across an overcrowded prison estate.

Eligible offenders can be freed after serving 40% of their sentence. It’s a measure they’re trialling for 18 months.

Alongside this, they’ve launched a review of sentencing policy led by former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke who will be considering the effectiveness of fines and tougher community sentences, as an alternative to custody.

The population pressures in this prison have been a bit better in recent weeks, but still, you can feel the friction.

The governor told us at times recently it’s felt like “a pressure cooker”, made worse by a summer of riots where there were “daily calls” to check that “every bed” was being used.

‘Every day is unpredictable’

What strikes you inside is just how loud it is – all the time.

This was by all accounts not the worst day inside a prison. In fact, it felt fairly typical.

But it was just so loud. Absolutely everywhere. Even when the prisoners were locked up – one inmate was blaring loud music from behind his cell door. It was a complete sensory overload.

Some of the staff told us that they’d developed hearing problems as a result of working inside.

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“Every day is unpredictable, you don’t know what you’re coming into,” said Officer Musmeci.

Asked what a bad day looks like, she reels off a list: “It could be fighting a fire, it could be giving CPR, it could be stopping a giant fight, a near on riot, it could be anything.

“Some days you come in and you’ve got all of that in one day. Some days you’ve got none of it,” she said.

Any time outside the cells feels frenetic.

We watched prisoners head from the wing to the servery as they got their lunch. I was asking staff about the food options but had to repeat my question a few times before I actually heard what they said.

The clashing, the banging, the shouting. The noise is like nothing I’d experienced before.

The food options were screamed not said.

‘A revolving door’

On the menu was a tomato pasta dish, falafel and couscous, a chicken pie slice, or a cheese and tomato roll. The prison spends £3 a day per inmate on food.

It might not sound like a lot of money to spend on a person’s diet, and yet prisoners here suggest people being released are wanting to return to keep a roof over their head. They question the effectiveness of early release measures.

Matt, who is on remand for drug offences, told me it’s like “a revolving door”.

“I’m seeing a lot of people being released homeless. They’re coming back for breaches of one sort of another, because they’d rather be in prison. They want a roof over their head,” he said.

Timothy, also in prison for drug offences, said the same: “You’ve got people now that break the law purposefully because they haven’t got anywhere to live.

“I can name four people off the top of my head, but there’s more, that cause damage to come back because they haven’t got anywhere to live.”

This is predominately a remand jail – many are waiting to be sentenced or awaiting trial.

The prison is set up to be about 40% remand. They’re currently operating with a 65% remand population. Many of them only stay for a short amount of time, which makes purposeful activity much more restricted.

“It can be very difficult”, said Mandy Huggins, head of education at Elmley. “There’s a high churn.”

We’re inside the laundry room where the more serious offenders work.

“What it means is that you have a higher level of unemployed prisoners. The last thing we want is people in their cells longer than they need to be. Or people that want to work that aren’t able to,” Ms Huggins said.

You can tell the staff really care about implementing these schemes. Success for Ms Huggins is “impacting the prisoners’ lives”.

But with population pressures the way they are, almost everything is more difficult. And there’s some way to go before the prison estate is out of this crisis.

The government said it “inherited prisons in crisis, within days of collapse” and is clear it is implementing measures such as the review of sentencing to “ensure we never again have more prisoners than prison spaces”.

It said it has been “forced to introduce an early release programme to stop a crisis that would have overwhelmed the criminal justice system, meaning we would no longer be able to lock up dangerous criminals and protect the public”.

The government has pledged to recruit 1,000 more trainee probation officers by March 2025.