United Kingdom: suicide jail failed to improve, says doctor

Safety improvements were not made at a prison with the highest suicide rate in England and Wales despite a spate of deaths, a psychiatrist has told the BBC.

Dr Elizabeth van Horn quit her job at Woodhill Prison in April, saying staff shortages had made change impossible.

Families of some of those who died are due to learn if judges will order the government to make the prison safer.

The Ministry of Justice said it could not comment ahead of the court ruling.

Since 2013, 18 inmates have killed themselves at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes.

The jail houses both Category A prisoners and convicts from the local area on short sentences.

The courts, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and the prison’s own independent monitoring board have all raised concerns.

These include chronic understaffing, over-reliance on agency and temporary staff, while, as well as suicides, assaults on both staff and inmates have also risen in recent years.

Early last year Dr van Horn was asked to go to Woodhill, working two days a week.

The experienced clinical psychiatrist had already spent six years working in other prisons, including Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubs, in London.

Her first impressions were not good.

“I was very struck by the lack of staff.

“There were lots of gaps in the discipline staffing regime, and anecdotally, certainly for the last six to eight months, quite a lot of the staff were quite newly trained and inexperienced.”

Asked if anything had changed at the prison following each suicide, as management had promised families and the courts, Dr van Horn was clear: “No, not really, not in terms of an obvious change.

“It’s not a question of not knowing what needs to be done better, because often these inquests throw up the same issues - but how do you achieve that?

“And I think not having a stable workforce is a fairly primary problem in terms of achieving these goals.

“You can only get things done if you’ve the workforce to do it.”

Staff shortages can see inmates locked up for 23 hours a day, a major cause of mental health problems, she told the BBC.

“Particularly for people with pre-existing mental health problems, that is an added burden…

“And when they complain about it, they are often seen to be attention-seeking, but in fact, they can’t cope with that degree of isolation.

“What they need is to have meaningful activity, more social contact and less time isolated on their own.”

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