Anti-drone cages, short corridors and small houses: how better design can solve British prison problems | Alex South

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I met Jake in prison. He was a lifer and I was an officer. By the time I began working with him, he’d already served 15 years. Unsurprisingly, his view of prison was different to mine. He saw things I didn’t.

“What do you think it looks like?” Jake asked me.

We stood beside each other on a residential wing. Rows and rows of identical cell doors branched out in front of us, above us, below us. A narrow walkway connected the upper landings to the stairwells.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be seeing. It just looked like prison. Doors, bars, gates, a lot of grey.

“A tower block,” he said. “It looks like a tower block. People’s homes stacked on top of each other. Walkways in the sky.”

After that conversation, I couldn’t un-see it. Over the next decade, I noticed it in almost every prison I went to. In contemporary prisons and Victorian-era prisons, all of them multiple storeys high. And just as the stairwells of tower blocks have been the settings for devastating violence, prison stairwells can be particularly dangerous places – badly lit and full of blind spots for officers. Prison design can drastically change the living conditions for inmates and the working conditions for staff.

Take window cages. I have worked in two prisons where steel cages are fixed to cell windows. A criminological interpretation might posit them as oppressive, even unnecessary. After all, the cages are in addition to window panes and a set of bars. But when I began working in a prison where there were none, I felt their absence keenly. There, inmates were able to throw almost anything out of their windows. Uneaten food, litter, clothes, broken kettles. In a jail notorious for its extended periods of lock-up, it was commonplace to see crisp packets, juice cartons, chicken bones, teabags and stale baguettes raining down. And just as commonplace to see the rats swarming below. But unpleasant though all of that was, we had more pressing concerns. No window cages meant that not only could prisoners throw things out, they could bring them in. Drones have, quite literally, changed the prison landscape. Drones that deliver takeaways, alcohol, drugs, mobile phones. And knives. According to the prisons watchdog, this now constitutes a ‘threat to national security’.

When I first became an officer, contraband was smuggled into prisons through more conventional methods – during visits or in packages thrown over the wall. Drones have surpassed all that. They have made it far easier to bring illicit items into prison, and as a result the sub-economy has exploded. Towards the end of my career as an officer, a prisoner I’d known from a local jail was transferred to the high-security establishment I then worked in. We talked about the differences between the two prisons. High-security conditions were much safer for both of us.

Nevertheless, he lamented his loss of income, admitting that at one point he had been making £4,000 a week from contraband delivered directly to his window via drone. And yet he acknowledged the impact of something as simple as a window cage. It is doubtlessly unpleasant to look out of your window and have a metal cage looking back at you. But it is a very particular kind of fear to leave your cell each day and know someone on that wing is carrying a knife. Not a prison shank, or a tuna can wrapped in a sock ready to be swung: an actual knife.

Modern prisons need short, wide corridors that ensure a clear line of sight and allow for easy intervention should violent incidents occur. They also need CCTV, anti-helicopter wire and geofencing that can deter drones.We also need creative design when building new sites. The UK justice system is struggling with inmate numbers and the government is planning on building more supermax prisons, but this cannot be the answer. I have visited such prisons in Texas where hundreds of prisoners slept on bunk beds in repurposed gymnasiums. There was a lot going on in there, but it wasn’t rehabilitation.

Instead, high security prisons are generally positive examples of smart design. Residential units are smaller and sub-divided into spurs housing as few as 40 men. This makes building relationships easier to achieve, but it also allows staff to contain incidents. The most effective prisons are those that foster a community culture and humanise the people inside and most importantly, where everyone feels safe.

  • Alex South is a former prison officer and the author of the memoir Behind These Doors

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