Holloway

“I’ve got stability in here, I know where I’m going to sleep every night, I know when I’m going to eat, when that door’s locked I know I’m going to be safe, I know I’m not going to be kicked out in the middle of the night.” Kirsten

In this programme we meet Holloway’s youngest inmates. Their stories provide an insight into the pattern of criminality among young women and the way they deal with prison life.

For some, it is ‘Hotel Holloway’, a refuge among a surrogate family away from the turbulence of drink, drugs and violence on the outside; for others, it is an opportunity to learn lessons and ensure they do not return.

Aged between 18 and 21 they are kept separate from other prisoners. For many, prison provides the first experience of order in otherwise chaotic lives. A high proportion spent childhood in care; others witnessed or suffered violence and nearly a third experienced sexual abuse. By the time they get to Holloway 90 per cent of young offenders have mental health problems or addictions. They are also highly prone to self harm.

Holloway Governor Sue Saunders says: “I think there’s a strong belief that if only we can get the right interventions for young offenders they might be ripe to change. They’re young, they deserve a chance, they may not have had the best start in life and we want to provide them with some good role models, and teach them about boundaries which can be a big issue with young offenders.”

Charlotte and Katie are both inside for violent offences - they are best friends and work together on the wing.

Charlotte, 19, needed money for her drug habit and was caught trying to rob someone while carrying a knife. It’s her first time in prison. Katie has been in Holloway before. She is a heavy drinker with violent tendencies and was jailed for smashing a glass in someone’s face after downing ten pints of lager.

Katie tells the programme: “There are only two main rules on this wing: you don’t steal off each other and the other one is manners. Manners don’t cost anything, there’s no need for no manners. When you’re doing stressful stuff, like in the kitchen serving people’s food, and they’re saying, ‘I want this, I want that,’ it’s rude – don’t come to jail if you don’t like the way it’s done. Like if prison was tougher then obviously I would have been scared to have come back. It’s not tough - the only tough thing about it is not being able to see your family.”

Charlotte says: “Three times a day you get fed, right, you get perks like …it’s just easy, easy, you don’t need to do nothing for yourself. Do you know if I was an orphan I think jail would be the best place for me, because you’re like one big family here on the unit.”

She tells the programme: “Hotel Holloway, Sh*t Hole, Hotel Holloway. That’s what we all call it.”

There are about thirty young offenders on the wing, but as Holloway is a holding prison, they come and go all the time.

Like the adult inmates they are allowed to wear their own clothes. The regime is the same as well, providing a structure to their day. They are woken at 8 am and locked up at 8 pm, and, apart from lunchtime when they are confined to their cells, they are free to associate the rest of the time.

The prison offers them education which would improve their chances outside, but as many were excluded from school they would often rather go to the gym or for a swim in the prison pool.

The girls are encouraged to work, and most of the jobs on offer are neither easy nor glamorous. Those who do get jobs earn between seven and more than twenty pounds a week, those who don’t work receive two pounds fifty a week in prison unemployment pay.

The prison staff keep a close eye on the girls’ behaviour, and there are constant searches for drugs. The prison’s job is to impose discipline and when the prisoners misbehave they swiftly get locked in their cells. But then when the girls are locked up alone in their cells their cockiness is replaced by vulnerability.

Alexis, 19, has been locked in her cell for shouting at an officer. She has a history of cutting herself and self harms to relieve stress. While the officers deal with her the rest of the prisoners on the wing are locked up.

Alexis has smashed up her television set and the officers need to get into her room to check she is safe, but they also have to protect themselves. Assaults on staff in Holloway more than doubled last year.

Sue Saunders says: “Obviously when a number of staff have to go in, it’s very unpleasant actually to have to use control and restraint techniques on a woman and they don’t like to have to do that, and it’s very much a last resort.”

There are procedures laid down to protect prisoners and also to protect prison staff, so the officers wear protective clothing. When they go in Alexis is sitting quietly in her toilet cubicle – she hasn’t hurt herself and offers no resistance.

Alexis faces an adjudication hearing for smashing her television set. As she has smashed her television three times before, she will now spend the remaining 18 months of her sentence without a television. She is serving six and a half years for importing drugs, and is battling with depression. Like many of the women she experienced trauma as a child. Her life started to unravel when at the age of 13, her mother died.

Alexis says: “When she passed away I started drinking really hard, smoking weed every night, I just went off the rails, stopped going to school, I had nothing to live for. I ended up in care.”

Alexis points to a photo of her Mum and two younger sisters and says: “She was my rock, my everything, it’s just so hard because sometimes I think to myself she’ll come back and get me. And I think after six years you’ll be fine, but you won’t, people are like, ‘It will get better as you get older,’ but it doesn’t, I just don’t want to be here.”

Being in care is a common story among the women. Many have existed for years without real love and stability in their lives.

Tanya and Leigh have got together since they’ve been in Holloway. They are both in for violent offences.

Tanya: “It’s weird because I haven’t had a relationship like this with a girl before but out of all the men I’ve been with she makes me happy and I can talk to her and she doesn’t judge me, she likes me for me. The reason I’m in here is because of men. I’ve been in so much trouble with men over the years, they do my head in. I met Leigh and it was like something good came out of it. It just happened. Some people find the love of their life in jail.”

Away from the people she loves, Charlotte is feeling the pressure of prison life more than ever. She is hoping that her first stay in prison will be her last.

“I don’t want to be that person anymore who does something. I want to be this new person that my parents are proud to say, ‘That’s my daughter.’ And brothers proud to say, ‘That’s my sister she don’t solve it with her fist no more.’”

Charlotte still has 15 months to serve, and says: “I don’t think I can handle this every day, I’m going to end up doing something terrible soon.”

Eva comes from a stable family in Estonia and had never been in trouble before being arrested, aged just 17, for smuggling drugs into Britain. She is 19 months into her sentence and with another nine months to serve she is counting down the days to her release. “I haven’t seen my mum for 19 months and I feel it now. I miss her so much, I just want to go home and say sorry for them, sorry for everything.”

Eva has used her time in prison wisely. She didn’t speak a word of English when she was arrested, but has been studying hard to earn a number of qualifications and her good behaviour is about to pay off. She had applied to be released early by offering to be deported, an offer which has now been accepted. It means she will be a free woman and soon back home with her family.

But others aren’t so keen to leave. 20-year-old Kirsten is coming to the end of a four month sentence for being drunk and disorderly, assaulting a police officer and carrying a knife.

She tells the programme: “I really do like it here. I know it’s weird to say but I’m dreading going. I’m really upset that I’ve got to leave next week. I’ve got stability in here, I know where I’m going to sleep every night, I know when I’m going to eat, when that door’s locked I know I’m going to be safe, I know I’m not going to be kicked out in the middle of the night.”

Kirsten’s downfall has been alcohol. “I love my vodka, I drink loads of it. Even though I get really nasty on it, I drink loads of it. One minute I’ll be laughing and joking with you and the next minute I’ll want to beat the hell out of you for no reason, like it’s just got out of control.”

Kirsten will regularly drink a whole bottle of vodka, and now it has damaged her pancreas.

She reveals: “When I was 16 a doctor said to me he’d be surprised if I live till 18 because of my drinking.”

80 per cent of the girls on the wing have drink or drugs problems.

When asked what her demons are, Charlotte replies: “Drugs, even though I’m away from it, away from my dealers and all that, it’s still there. It’s still in my head.”

However tough these girls were on the outside, life in Holloway can still come as a shock.

Charlotte says “When I first came into prison I went nuts, I just thought I was going crazy. I thought I was having a breakdown. It’s just loneliness, pure loneliness. I’ve never been suicidal in my life, I’ve never thought like I would kill myself now, never had that thought, ever, but when I came to jail that is all I thought about, was I’m better off dead.”

For some inmates the experience of prison pushes them over the edge. The last suicide in Holloway was two years ago. In total, 12 women have killed themselves in British jails in the past three years.

All women at Holloway are viewed as vulnerable, but young offenders more than most.

In women’s prisons a staggering 70 per cent of the women self harm. Men are more likely to use violence on others to express their anger and frustration whereas women will turn it upon themselves.

Kirsten has been cutting herself at times of stress since the age of 11 and her anxiety about her imminent release becomes too much to bear. “Last night I cut my wrists and my arms so I’ve got to be watched constantly now. At least in here I know I can’t drink and can’t do the drugs , I can’t get back into that way of life where I go around stealing from shops, selling my stuff just so I can get a drink.”

Mark Landy, Head of Mental Health at Holloway, tells the programme: “What we find with lots of the women is that when they’re locked in cells of a night time they feel a terrible sense of abandonment and isolation and this reminds them of past experiences they had as children when they were left by their families or by the care system and they then relive this in the present day.”

At times on the young offenders wing it can feel almost like a party atmosphere - but the mood can change in an instant. A new girl on the unit has been found with a leather belt around her neck and has stopped breathing. She is given mouth to mouth resuscitation and thankfully starts breathing again. Her life was saved because of the quick action of the officers.

A prison officer is asked if they worry that they might be moments too late.

She replies: “There’s always that worry, but I think it’s about knowing the women. We knew she was on a downer so we were observing her anyway.

“It was noticeable that she was quite quiet and withdrawn, but it was a very, very, very lively loud night and we had so much going on, there wasn’t anyone to sit and hold her hand, perhaps, and I feel a bit bad about that, but there isn’t time always to do that.”

The prisoner was taken to hospital to recover, only to be returned to her prison cell later. Her story is tragically not unusual in Holloway. As a three-month-old baby she had been placed on the at risk register, as a thirteen-year-old she had gone into care, and at 18 is in Holloway.

Charlotte is being transferred to another prison. While her friends are sad to see her go, she is resigned to her fate, and remains determined not to go back to being a ‘bad girl’.

“I’m a lucky prisoner, a lot of the girls in here ain’t got no family, my family are there 100 per cent no matter what I do. If I can come through this a better person then I’ve made them proud. If I come out and I’m the same person I was when I came in then I’ve wasted my time. What was the point of coming here to go out and be exactly the same hood rat I was when I came in here?”

Kirsten is being released but she is highly unlikely to turn over a new leaf. She says to a prison officer, “Please don’t make me go.”

The officer tells her: “You’ve got to go, you’ll be back anyway.”

Kirsten says: “I’ll be back Monday.”

The officer tells the programme: “She likes it in prison. She’s got nothing on the outside, so what is there to go out to? And even Kirsten will agree she’ll be back. We are like family – there’s only so much we can do but there are people outside who need to do their bit. I think that’s where society lets them down, when they get released from prison.”

Kirsten tells the programme: “My dream was to be a care worker in a care home because I looked after my Nan when she was dying of cancer, so that got me into the path of doing it, but I can’t do that now ‘cos I’ve got a criminal record, it’s got assault on it. So now I’m going to carry on with the counselling on the outside, go on probation and get like a voluntary job in a kennels or something like that.”

When Kirsten is released she is met by an old friend, who she says will keep her on the straight and narrow. He has a present of some beer and vodka for her and tells the programme that she will only have a couple on the way home. Later that day Kirsten got drunk and was in trouble with the police ended up back in court.

She is not alone: within two years of being released from prison two out of three young people re-offend.

Last edited: Wednesday, 11 March 2009