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Life is like that for this woman in uniform

It just doesn’t occur to you, on trying to get into a prison for the first time, that it will be so much like a medieval fortress. Browsing round the high, flint walls of Lewes prison, in Lewes, in the south east of England, for instance, it seems absurdly apt that the entrance should be, yes, a giant wooden gate with — of course — a titanic iron knocker beside a tiny face-hatch that pops open when you rap soundly for attention. This, no visitor or long-t erm resident could ever doubt, is a place of incarceration.

Inside, as I have my bag checked and my mobile phone sequestered, one uniformed man is wheeling a mirrored trolley around the underside of a delivery van while another heaves open the main gate to allow the entrance of a minicab containing a policeman and a prisoner in manacles. After being checked for chewing gum, which can be used for pressing keys or blocking locks (and makes a frightful mess on the floor), I am finally ushered through a series of locked doors into the presence of Brenda Hinnell, the prison officer I have come to meet. There is nothing at all medieval about her.

“You don’t watch Bad Girls (TV series), do you?” she asks. No, I am pleased to admit. “Good, because it’s nothing like that!” Ms Hinnell laughs uproariously, shaking her hair, which is dyed black and white in sympathy with her uniform. Her manner is reassuringly blunt, and yet, though life at Lewes may not be eventful enough for primetime viewing, this is a category B men’s prison (the second most secure) and trouble of some kind is never very far away.

“If there’s a prisoner incident on the landings, it could be a prisoner attacking a member of staff or two prisoners assaulting each other,” she blithely explains, “we have alarm bells. They’re bright green buttons all over the wings. We all know where they are, and the prisoners do as well, because sometimes they press them just for a laugh to watch us all run - I think we’ve had maybe four alarms this week.” She laughs again, with motherly indulgence.

So far in her six-year career, however, Ms. Hinnel has only had to use her baton on an inmate on one occasion. “I was on the wing as they were collecting their dinner,” she remembers, “and I saw two prisoners come rushing down the stairs and thought, what’s going on here? I heard, “I’m going to effing have you!” And I looked at this guy, who was like, “No! No! No!” The next minute they were on the floor. They were really going to have him and slice him up with a blade. I had no option but to get my stave out and use it correctly, on his knee.”

Considering how carefully the inmates’ lives are regimented by Ms Hinnell and her colleagues, it is actually a wonder that they find time to attack each other at all. A prison officer’s “main shift” (daytime) begins at 8 a.m., when two colleagues take over their regular landing of 30 inmates and check that everyone is still locked inside their cells, eating the breakfasts that they collected the night before. Afterwards, they open the doors and take in any special request forms, before the prisoners are encouraged to exercise outside. At 9 a.m., everyone except those on remand is expected to go to work, generally doing something menial and repetitive like making paper folders or reflective road markings.

Around 11 a.m., once Ms Hinnell and her colleagues have processed the morning forms, they lock up all the inmates again and generally use the time before lunch to conduct their daily search of each cell. “You have to go in and check that the lock’s OK, the window’s OK, that there’s no holes in the wall, and they’re not trying to dig out anywhere,” she says. And she has to be careful too. One of the pieces of contraband she is most likely to find secreted somewhere unexpected is the blade from a disposable razor embedded into a melted toothbrush.

After lunch is roll check at 12.15 p.m., during which the prisoners are locked in again, and counted, so that the staff themselves can get their lunch and leave the wing under the supervision of one officer. “When you’re going along you’re also checking the locks,” Ms Hinnell explains, “to make sure that the door is locked, because you’re leaving the whole wing with one person. And if anybody hasn’t locked the door properly and they get out... you’ve had it, haven’t you?” At 2 p.m., assuming all is well, the prisoners go back to work, after which the officers change shifts at teatime.

At the moment, Ms Hinnell is looking after race and equality issues within the prison, which has temporarily taken her away from this daily routine. In her current post, she has also been able to learn mediation skills to help settle disputes. It sounds rather like counselling, I observe. “Yes,” she says. “But you’re a counsellor on the wings anyway, as a landing officer.” She cites one sad occasion when she successfully helped a prisoner on the detox unit to stop self-harming, only to hear, shortly after his release, that he had died of an overdose.

It was not the opportunity to empathise, however, that first drew her to the prison service. After eight years in the army, which she left at 25 to bring up her son, she heard of a job available at Ashwell prison in Rutland, in central England, as an officer support grade, a kind of non-qualified staff job. “I just saw it advertised in the paper and thought, I fancy that,” she recalls. “My perception of prisons was very similar to the military: male-orientated, and I’d had no problem in the army with being a woman. I also feel really drawn to organisation and discipline. And part of me wanted to find out why they do what they do. Why do people commit crimes and take drugs?”

Her early duties were mundane: watching cameras, patrolling walls, taking visitors’ phones away and suchlike. But she saw enough to whet her appetite. “I used to watch the officers and think, I could do that. Obviously they were on more money than me.”

To qualify as a prison officer, she had to pass a series of tests in basic maths, English and fitness, before taking her JSac, a role-playing exam to show she could deal with difficult situations. Finally, during her first few months on the job, she undertook more training, where she learned in detail about things such as searching cells, using control and restraint techniques and responding to an alarm call. “I got Best Student!” she beams.

That first year, when all officers remain provisionally employed, was also a formative time. “It takes that whole year until you decide what type of prison officer you’re going to be,” she says. “I am now known as very firm, because of my military background, but very fair. If I can help, and I’m allowed to help, I will do. And if I can’t and I have to say no, I will say why.” In her time in the job, Ms Hinnell says she has gradually learned to listen to prisoners more and now tries to understand them better. “My perception in that first year was, you know: prisoners, they’ve done wrong. But over the years it’s been like [I’ve discovered] they’re actually normal people. They are human beings.”

These days she holds the temporary rank of senior officer, and is clearly very proud of the pip on her shoulder. Yet she feels that the public attitude to the prison service continues to be almost universally negative. “When I meet people I don’t tell them what I do,” she says. “And I wouldn’t go into [the supermarket] in my uniform. That’s purely because of the perception of the public, not because of ex-prisoners."

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