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.
HMP Elmley is currently operating with a 65% remand population
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.
When the cells are hot ‘frustration’ among inmates builds up
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 noise is like nothing I’d experienced before’
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.
The governor told Sky News at times recently it’s felt like ‘a pressure cooker’
“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.
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From September: ‘There wasn’t one space on the prison wing’
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.
The parents of survivors of the Southport attack have revealed the “untold stories” of how their “hero” children escaped.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, murdered Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, in what the chairman of the public inquiry Sir Adrian Fulford called “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.
Eight children were injured along with two adults at a Taylor Swift-themed class in the Merseyside seaside town on 29 July last year, while 15 others escaped without physical injuries.
The surviving victims and their families have been granted anonymity during the inquiry, with one girl referred to as C3. Her father was the first to give evidence at Liverpool Town Hall on Wednesday.
Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King were murdered in the attack
Reading a statement on behalf of him and his wife, he told how their daughter was the first girl to escape the scene by running from the Hart Space building and hiding behind a parked car before jumping through an open car door.
“Our nine-year-old daughter was stabbed three times in the back by a coward she didn’t even see,” he said.
“Although she didn’t know what was happening – she knew she had to run. She ran out of the studio door, down the stairs, and out of the building.”
Read more: Southport inquiry as it happened
He said she can be seen “looking scared, confused and pained” in CCTV footage of the incident, adding: “It was troubling for us to see what she had to go through, before either of her parents had arrived at the scene.”
“We are so thankful and proud that despite being critically injured, she was able to make the decisions she did in that terrible moment,” he said.
The girl’s father said his daughter “continues to astound” them with the way she dealt with the attack and her recovery, saying: “It has been inspiring for us to witness.”
Inquiry chair Sir Adrian Fulford at Liverpool Town Hall. Pic: PA
He said she has difficulty sleeping, experiences flashbacks, looks over her shoulder scanning for potential danger when she leaves the house, has a fear of loud noises and has to turn off some songs when they come on the radio.
“Our daughter knows that she is loved,” he said.
“It is through this support and love that she will continue to thrive. We couldn’t be prouder of her. She is our hero.”
Stabbed 33 times
The parents of a girl referred to as C1 told how their “beautiful, articulate, fun-loving little girl” was stabbed 33 times.
After being attacked she escaped the building, but Rudakubana was seen dragging her back inside in CCTV footage played during his sentencing hearing, which drew gasps in court, before she was stabbed 20 more times.
“That is how she became known in this nightmare. The girl that was dragged back in,” her mother said.
Police at the scene. Pic: PA
She thanked the teachers who escaped to call police and flag down help but said: “The most painful of truths for us though, and what has been most devastating to come to terms with, is that there were no adults to help during both of her attacks.
“She was only supported by other children. The courage and strength she found leaves me crushed, but in complete awe.”
She added: “It is these untold stories of remarkable strength and bravery that are missing when we have heard other accounts of this day.”
The mother said the “hours and days that followed the attack were a living hell” and her daughter’s memories – including a concert of her “idol” Taylor Swift – have “been forfeited to make space for the trauma that she carries”.
“We tell her she was brave. How proud we are that she was able to help other girls. How her strength makes us feel strong. How important what she did that day was. She is her own hero. She may be a survivor of this attack, but she is still trying to survive this, every single day,” she said.
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‘We need to understand what went wrong’
Attack ‘changed everything’
The mother of a girl referred to as C8 said she was “like any other seven-year-old little girl”, “with an incredible energy” and “full of life”.
But in a statement read out by a legal representative, she said the attack last year “changed everything” when she got a “panicked phone call” from a friend’s mother, who couldn’t find the girls.
“That moment, the sound of fear in her voice and the panic I felt will never leave me,” she said.
“I rushed to the scene and what I saw is something no parent should ever see. My daughter had sustained serious physical injuries including a stab wound to her arm and a cut to her face and chin.”
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‘We don’t want Elsie forgotten’
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She said her daughter “remembers the attack vividly” and later told her “she thought it had to be fake, because she couldn’t believe something that terrible could really be happening”.
“Where she was once eager to go off with her friends, she now needs my support if it is somewhere public or unknown,” she said.
“Simple days out now need a level of safety planning that we would never have considered before.”
‘Constant flashbacks’
The mother of a girl referred to as Q, who escaped without being physically injured, told how she arrived to collect her daughter to find “children running from the building, screaming and fearing for their lives”.
In a statement read to the inquiry by a legal representative on her behalf, she said it was “the most horrific experience of my life”.
“What I saw on that day will stick with me forever, I constantly have flashbacks and relive what happened,” she said.
She said her daughter has become “very withdrawn” since the attack and has asked her parents, “How will I ever be normal again?”
Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January and is being investigated over an alleged attack on a prison officer at Belmarsh prison in May.
The public inquiry, announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in January, is looking into whether the attack could or should have been prevented, given what was known about the killer.
Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, had contact with police, the courts, the youth justice system, social services and mental health services, and was referred to the government’s anti-extremism Prevent scheme three times before the murders.
A rapid review into his contact with Prevent found his case should have been kept open and that he should have been referred to Channel, another anti-terror scheme.
C1’s mother said: “She deserves the truth, she deserves accountability. She deserves an apology. Our girls deserve an apology.
“Backed up by the promise that changes will be made and this will not be allowed to happen again.”
UK
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While the politicians talk, so many people come from around the world to try to get across the Channel on small boats. But why?
Why make such a perilous crossing to try to get to a country that seems to be getting increasingly hostile to asylum seekers?
As the British and French leaders meet, with small boats at the forefront of their agenda, we came to northern France to get some answers.
It is not a new question, but it is peppered with fresh relevance.
Over the course of a morning spent around a migrant camp in Dunkirk, we meet migrants from Gaza, Iraq, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sri Lanka and beyond.
Some are fearful, waving us away; some are happy to talk. Very few are comfortable to be filmed.
All but one man – who says he’s come to the wrong place and actually wants to claim asylum in Paris – are intent on reaching Britain.
They see the calm seas, feel the light winds – perfect conditions for small boat crossings.
John has come here from South Sudan. He tells me he’s now 18 years old. He left his war-torn home nation just before his 16th birthday. He feels that reaching Britain is his destiny.
“England is my dream country,” he says. “It has been my dream since I was at school. It’s the country that colonised us and when I get there, I will feel like I am home.
“In England, they can give me an opportunity to succeed or to do whatever I need to do in my life. I feel like I am an English child, who was born in Africa.”
‘England is my dream country,’ John tells Adam Parsons
He says he would like to make a career in England, either as a journalist or in human resources, and, like many others we meet, is at pains to insist he will work hard.
The boat crossing is waved away as little more than an inconvenience – a trifle compared with the previous hardships of his journey towards Britain.
We meet a group of men who have all travelled from Gaza, intent on starting new lives in Britain and then bringing their families over to join them.
One man, who left Gaza two years ago, tells me that his son has since been shot in the leg “but there is no hospital for him to go to”.
Next to him, a man called Abdullah says he entered Europe through Greece and stayed there for months on end, but was told the Greek authorities would never allow him to bring over his family.
Britain, he thinks, will be more accommodating. “Gaza is being destroyed – we need help,” he says.
Abdullah says ‘Gaza is being destroyed – we need help’
A man from Eritrea tells us he is escaping a failing country and has friends in Britain – he plans to become a bicycle courier in either London or Manchester.
He can’t stay in France, he says, because he doesn’t speak French. The English language is presented as a huge draw for many of the people we talk to, just as it had been during similar conversations over the course of many years.
I ask many of these people why they don’t want to stay in France, or another safe European country.
Some repeat that they cannot speak the language and feel ostracised. Another says that he tried, and failed, to get a residency permit in both France and Belgium.
But this is also, clearly, a flawed survey. Last year, five times as many people sought asylum in France as in Britain.
And French critics have long insisted that Britain, a country without a European-style ID card system, makes itself attractive to migrants who can “disappear”.
Read more:
Channel crossings rise 50% in first six months of 2025
French police forced to watch on as migrants attempt crossing
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Migrant Channel crossings hit new record
A young man from Iraq, with absolutely perfect English, comes for a chat. He oozes confidence and a certain amount of mischief.
It has taken him only seven days to get from Iraq to Dunkirk; when I ask how he has made the trip so quickly, he shrugs. “Money talks”.
He looks around him. “Let me tell you – all of these people you see around you will be getting to Britain and the first job they get will be in the black market, so they won’t be paying any tax.
“Back in the day in Britain, they used to welcome immigrants very well, but these days I don’t think they want to, because there’s too many of them coming by boat. Every day it’s about seven or 800 people. That’s too many people.”
“But,” I ask, “if those people are a problem – then what makes you different? Aren’t you a problem too?”
He shakes his head emphatically. “I know that I’m a very good guy. And I won’t be a problem. I’ll only stay in Britain for a few years and then I’ll leave again.”
A man from Sri Lanka says he “will feel safe” when he gets to Britain; a tall, smiling man from Ethiopia echoes the sentiment: “We are not safe in our home country so we have come all this way,” he says. “We want to work, to be part of Britain.”
Emmanuel is another from South Sudan – thoughtful and eloquent. He left his country five years ago – “at the start of COVID” – and has not seen his children in all that time. His aim is to start a new life in Britain, and then to bring his family to join him.
He is a trained electrical engineer, but says he could also work as a lorry driver. He is adamant that Britain has a responsibility to the people of its former colony.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
“The British came to my country – colonising, killing, raping,” he said. “And we didn’t complain. We let it happen.
“I am not the problem. I won’t fight anyone; I want to work. And if I break the laws – if any immigrant breaks the laws – then fine, deport them.
“I know it won’t be easy – some people won’t like me, some people will. But England is my dream.”
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