Prisoner claims he's often locked in cell for 23 hours a day, has seen knife fights and been threatened by staff

LETTER FROM BEHIND BARS ALLEGES BREACH OF HUMAN RIGHTS

- By GEORGE PALMER-SOADY

"I KNOW we have done wrong to be in prison in the first place but we are still human beings." Those are the words of an inmate at HMP Nottingham describing what he says is the reality of living in the facility.

The prisoner, who wished to remain anonymous, has sent a handwritten letter to the Post to “make people aware” of what he alleges to be happening inside the prison.

Claims of knife fights, being locked in cells for 23 hours a day, and threats from members of staff are among the allegations made by the inmate all of which, bar one, have been denied by the Ministry of Justice, which runs the prison.

He says that he and fellow inmates began to be left stuck in their cells for almost the entire day following a new strategy implemented at the prison called “roll count”. According to the prisoner, this requires officers on each wing to do a head count of all inmates in cells before morning and afternoon association the times when they are allowed out of their cells.

The Ministry of Justice's prison service instruction states that prisons must aim to allow a minimum of two hours out of cells for all prisoners each day, which includes time spent in the open air. However the inmate says since the new strategy has been implemented, this has not been happening, with officers frequently miscounting the number of prisoners.

“Most days we are locked up 23 hours, some days even 24 hours,” the inmate said. “One week in April we were locked up 24 hours on a Wednesday and 23 hours on the Thursday. It doesn’t happen from Friday to Sunday as there’s no education or workshops between then.

“But on Monday to Thursday this has now become a regular thing. It’s against the law and our human rights”.