UK: Wormwood Scrubs court case decisions
01 November 2001
England's biggest criminal investigation at a jail, involving the criminal trials of 27 prison officers from London's Wormwood Scrubs prison who were accused of assaulting inmates, ended in September with the conviction of six officers. Following their imprisonment the director-general of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper that it:
would be naive to suggest that there weren't other incidents at Wormwood Scrubs where other prisoners were abused. There was a culture of violence...which was utterly unacceptable at the time of these appalling assaults
The former chief inspector of prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, said that a public inquiry should examine "the failure of managers and senior prison service managers to do anything when they knew what was happening, because they were being told" (see Statewatch vol 8 nos 2, 3 & 4, 5, vol 9 no 1). Two of the six jailed Prison Officers had their convictions quashed at the Court of Appeal at the end of September.
In 1994 the former chief inspector of prisons Sir Stephen Tumin warned, in his annual report, of "the illegal use of force" against prisoners by staff taking place in the segregation block at Wormwood Scrubs. Two years later his successor, Sir David Ramsbotham, repeated these concerns. A police inquiry - Operation Mevagissey - was launched following the compilation of a dossier alleging serious assaults on inmates written by the solicitors, Hickman and Rose in 1998. In the summer of 1999 the director general of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, announced that there was evidence to prosecute 27 officers from the prison on charges relating to assaults on prisoners.
September saw the culmination of the criminal trials against the officers and the jailing of six of them after two separate trials at Blackfriars Crown Court. In July three prison officers, Andrew Jones, Daniel Brewer and Craig Atkinson were found guilty of assaulting Timothy Donovan and in September they were jailed for 12, 15 and 18 months respectively. In September another three officers, John Nicol, Robert Lawrie and Darren Flyer were found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on Stephen Banks and were jailed for between three and a half and four years. The three attacked Banks, slamming him into a wall before charging him with assaulting them and entering into the prison record that he was an inmate known to be violent towards staff. Banks had been told, "There's going to be another death in custody" and "Do you know how easy it is to break a neck?"
Judge Byers, in the Donovan case, told the officers they had
Not only abused the trust and authority placed in you, but clearly your behaviour disgusted colleagues who saw what was going on in that cell. No one who heard those colleagues give evidence could have failed to notice the shock they felt by what they witnessed. During the course of that incident, not only did you let yourselves down but also the public and the Prison Service. (Guardian 5.9.00.)
The same judge, in sentencing the officers involved in the assault on Stephen Banks, told senior officer John Nicol, "If you behave like a vicious thug you will be punished like a vicious thug." Sentencing the officers he added:
I can only conclude that this episode was done for your own bizarre and sadistic entertainment. Such behaviour is bound to outrage all right-thinking people in a civilised society
The Crown Prosecution Service commented: "The CPS is satisfied to have secured justice in the cases of prison officers who have been convicted. Those in authority in prisons have a duty to ensure the safety of those in their care."
However, by the end of September two of the officers involved in the Donovan case - Andrew Jones and Daniel Brewer - had their unanimous guilty verdicts quashed at the Court of Appeal, when Lord Justice Kennedy, sitting with Mr Justice Morland and Mr Justice Silber, ruled that the jury's unanimous verdicts were<