Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2014 | Page 17
INTERVIEW
Beyond those walls
of the Island prison
By Peter White
F
rom the outside it looks one
of the most inhospitable
buildings on the Island. Its
drab, grey walls loom large as
you drive from Newport towards Cowes,
but strangely it remains something of
a tourist attraction. Locals and visitors
alike invariably glance across, perhaps
wondering what life is really like inside
the Island’s famous prison.
Andy Lattimore became Governor of
HMP Isle of Wight in January last year,
and he invited me to venture beyond the
walls to be given an intriguing insight
into life behind bars.
Of course there have been many
changes since the original Parkhurst
Prison opened in the 1830s . Camp
Hill followed in 1912, and finally came
Albany in the mid 1960s. Five years ago
the three prisons merged to become HMP
IW, and then the Camp Hill site became a
casualty in March 2013 when it closed its
doors for the last time as part of overall
prison reorganisation.
Andy joined the Prison Service in 1988,
and worked in several mainland prisons,
including Gartree in Leicester; Winson
Green in Birmingham; and Pentonville
and Holloway, and was then Governor
at Winchester Prison and Bullingdon in
Oxfordshire before moving here.
He said: “Prisons have changed. When
I joined the Prison Service, prisons were
unpleasant places in terms of basic
sanitation for example. These days it is
not cushy in any way - I am not running
a hotel - but it is about providing a basic,
decent environment where we can do
our work with prisoners. It is where
we challenge prisoners to change, and
achieve things that will help them return
to society as law abiding citizens. That is
our objective.”
HMP IW houses just over 1,100
prisoners, the majority sex offenders .
They are looked after by a staff of 580,
including around 200 prison officers.
So just how does HMP IW function,
and what is a typical day in the life of a
prisoner? Andy explained: “One thing we
do is provide the remand facility for the
Island, so anyone remanded into custody
from Island courts will come here. But
on conviction they would move to the
mainland. Otherwise we are a Category B
training prison, taking prisoners from all
over the country. There are only a small
handful of Islanders in prison here.
“Our job is to protect the public and
rehabilitate prisoners. We have a focus on
sex offenders and offending behaviour
programmes to specifically address sex
offending. Most of our prisoners are
serving at least four years, and once we
have done what we can, subject to an
assessment, if prisoners have reduced
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