Press Pack ROSS KEMP BEHIND BARS INSIDE BARLINNIE Content Page Programme information 2-4 Ross Kemp press pack interview 5-7 All contents strictly embargoed until 00.01am on Tuesday 24 October 2017
Episode 1 programme information Episode 1: TX Thursday 2 nd November at 9pm TBC Embargoed until 00.01am on Tuesday 24th October 2017 With unprecedented access, Ross Kemp immerses himself in prison life at the sharp end in HMP Barlinnie in Glasgow. The iconic prison has a formidable reputation and has served the city for over 130 years. With privileged and exclusive access to every part of the jail, Ross discovers what it is really like to be an inmate and how prison officers handle the violence, homemade weapons and drugs, which cast a shadow across daily life behind bars. He discovers what it is like to be a lifer, meets a prisoner preparing for freedom and with trepidation, enters the wing of the prison housing sex offenders, the fastest growing group of inmates in the prison system today. Housing around 1250 prisoners over five Victorian halls, Barlinnie has built a notorious reputation. Falling out with prison officers is not recommended but falling foul of fellow inmates can make your life a living hell. Inmate Hugh reveals that you don t grass on others, keep your mouth shut and don t stare at anyone. Hugh says to Ross: This yard can kick off in two minutes. It can happen in a heartbeat. Everything can be nice and calm and before you know it [people are] rolling about the ground boxing. People getting slashed and that. People punch you right out of your trainers in here. This is Barlinnie mate. Repeat offenders make up a vast percentage of the inmates at Barlinnie. Ross questions what our prisons are for and who they are serving. Are they for punishment? Do they contain dangerous people away from the rest of society? Or are they there to rehabilitate the men and women who live within their walls? In 2016 violence in prisons across Britain hit record levels. There were over 7000 assaults on staff and over 20,000 prisoner-on-prisoner attacks. Ross meets prison officer Stevie who shows him some of the weapons retrieved from searches carried out inside Barlinnie. Some weapons are made in jail and some are smuggled in using an extreme measure called banking where the carrier conceals the weapon in a cavity within their body. Drugs, mobile phones and other contraband can fetch up to five times that of street prices. And Stevie reveals that some inmates intentionally get themselves into prison, in order to make money. A third of inmates test positive for drugs when leaving jail, with valium, heroin and new psychoactive substances all in demand. Drug abuse is a huge issue in modern prison life and being caught can result in a disciplinary with the Prison Manager who can issue punishments including loss of TV and recreation, contact with family and confiscation of personal money. Ross sits in on a disciplinary hearing and is surprised at how informal the process is. Once the prisoner admits to his offence of smoking cannabis, the governor reduces his potential penalty to a loss of recreation time and association with other people. Despite previous allegations of brutality which lead to prisoner riots in 1987, Barlinnie s current officers appear tough but fair. Sex offenders are the fastest growing group of inmates in our prison service today and E Hall in Barlinnie holds up to 280, four times as many as a decade ago. An increasing number are older in age, as historic abuse claims now go through the courts. The oldest sex offender in Barlinnie is 89 years of age and needs carers to visit him twice a day. One inmate is serving four years for for his third offence of downloading indecent images of children. He agrees to talk to Ross and in a shocking exchange reveals he believes he will never be 2
cured of his feelings towards children but that he also believes he poses no danger to society. Ross admits to finding the interview extremely difficult and speaks to officer Donna, who works in E wing, to find out how she copes working in such an environment. Donna admits: I ve read their trial judge reports and narratives from the courts. It does affect you obviously because there are things I ve read that I would rather not have read. You don t want that imprint in your head. I know there are rapists in here and people who would sexually offend against somebody my age or any other male or female officer. But it s not something where you think, I come in every day and work with sex offenders who could potentially attack me. It takes a certain type of person to come in here and work in an environment like this. I suppose you could say that the staff who come in here are brave. The loss of their freedom is certainly a punishment for most prisoners but Ross is still unsure if the system is successfully rehabilitating its inmates. He visits Letham Hall, a prison within a prison, where prisoners from all over Scotland are sent before they are released back into society, after serving lengthy sentences. One inmate at Letham Hall committed murder and was originally sentenced to 12 years in prison but has now served 18 years behind bars. Ross asks him why he has served so much time. The inmate says: The biggest part is my own fault and it s drug tests. I m an addict. [Before I came to prison] my main thing was dope and I took a couple of eccies [ecstacy] if I was going dancing at the weekend, nothing serious. The main reason why [I] started taking heroin was because they brought mandatory drugs tests in. And cannabis stays in your system for up to 28 days. Heroin is out of your system for three days. It s hard to wrap your head around a life sentence. Just take heroin and it blanks everything. Blanks your emotions, blanks your thought patterns. You lie in for days, weeks, months. It turns into years. Many of the inmates Ross has met are trapped in a cycle of serving time and reoffending. He accompanies one inmate, Robert, as he finishes a seven month sentence. Robert admits he has lost count of how many times he has been incarcerated and that his re-appearances in the prison are like coming through a revolving door. At a cost of 3000 a month, Robert s latest stretch in Barlinnie has cost the taxpayer a substantial amount and within a few weeks of him leaving, Ross learns that Robert once again has outstanding charges and his freedom is uncertain. He speaks to the Michael Stoney, the prison Governor for his view on the system and the reason the prison population has doubled in the last 25 years. Michael says: We send a lot of people for very short sentences and we effectively can t do very much. In fact it probably causes more harm. They lose their tenancy, they could lose their job and they lose connection with their family. I would rather it was about changing people [than punishing people]. Certainly we are trying to make prisons work better but we can make it work for those we have here for a bit of time. For those who are just in and out, it s a pointless exercise. Time spent behind bars comes at a cost to both prisoners and our tax paying society. Ross concludes: There are definitely people here who should remain here because of the threat they pose to others and there are some who are here because of one awful mistake that has changed their lives and other peoples lives forever. But the vast majority are repeat offenders trapped in a cycle of substance abuse, violence and criminality and while some of them change there are others that don t. What I have found from the prisoners here is that the only person who can truly change them, is themselves. The big question has to be, are we as a society, doing enough to allow that change to happen? Produced by STV Productions for ITV. 3
Press Contacts Fiona Galliver (Mon-Tues) Fiona.Galliver@itv.com 0207 157 3029 Hannah Green (Weds - Fri) Hannah.Green@itv.com 0207 157 3029 Pictures: Peter Gray Peter.Gray@itv.com 0207 157 3046 4
ROSS KEMP - PRESS PACK INTERVIEW Strictly embargoed for publication until 0001hrs Tuesday 10 October 2017. What can viewers expect from the documentary? You are going to get unprecedented access to Barlinnie prison, one of Britain s oldest and most iconic prisons. You ll get interviews with repeat offenders, violent criminals, a murderer and a sex offender who didn t see the harm in looking at child pornography, so we didn t get on very well. He was upset that I wouldn t shake his hand. We are looking at what prison officers deal with. Ultimately we are asking, do prisons work? How would you describe Barlinnie prison? It s a tough, harsh environment. You ve got to understand that there s a prison within a prison, that s run by the inmates and all prisons only work on the goodwill of the prisoners. To keep that goodwill is a very, very fine art and they do it very well in Barlinnie. If you break the official rules, the prison officers will take action. But if you break the unofficial inmate rules, you are far more vulnerable and your life could become a living nightmare. I saw several weapons that had been confiscated by officers. One in particular was quite shocking and had three razor blades embedded into a piece of wood, that attaches around your middle finder with a cable tie. It s designed to leave a life changing injury and create a wound that is very difficult to sew up. Many of the inmates I saw there had been hit in the face with knives at some point in their lives. If you get attacked inside prison and you grass, you re in even more trouble. Also, you can t show vulnerability there or it s all over. If anyone says that prison isn t tough, I have one thing to say - try it. If you think because they ve got TV s and they get three meals a day, that it isn t tough - try it. When those cell doors shut there s no handle on the inside and all you can hear are the shouts and screams of inmates and people smashing themselves against the inside of their cell doors. You experienced the full process of being checked in as an inmate. How did that feel? Well, I had to take my clothes off for a start. I don t know how impressed or unimpressed they were! There were some jokes made at my expense, but I m quite happy to stand there naked. At my age, I don t really care. But look, that process is there to show that you re not carrying any weapons. You sit on a chair that detects if you have anything metallic in your anal cavity. There is an element of it making you feel vulnerable as you go in, to show you that you are now under the jurisdiction of the prison service. I arrived in a G4S vehicle and was handed over to the officers of Barlinnie. I had to give up all my personal items. It s about stripping you of your identity and making you a number. What reaction did you get from prisoners? How did you gain their trust? Some of them didn t want me there but most of them were very respectful that I was doing my job and there was a surprising amount of willingness from them to have their stories told. Hopefully I m seen as someone who doesn t take sides. I think people know that I ve been around and I ve interviewed criminals as well as police officers, and sometimes it s not easy to tell which are which in some parts of the world! We tell the truth in the documentaries we make. If we can bring a discussion to the table about whether prisons work, that s a good thing and the prisoners and the prison officers welcomed that. I believe it s time we looked at what s going on in our prisons but I don t claim to have all the answers. 5
In the main I experienced good humoured banter with the inmates but I did have a few insults thrown at me from prison windows. At one point a prisoner was being verbally aggressive to me and a well known criminal who is a respected inmate stepped in and told him to be quiet. He stopped very quickly, because he was the smaller of the two. Most of the inmates were accepting of myself and the crew. Truthfully, I don t think we could say we got to the true heart of Barlinnie because you never could unless you were a proper inmate, but the prison really opened its door to us, as open as they could ever be. Were you conscious of not appearing to judge them or their actions during interviews? Was that difficult to achieve? I m not going to feel sympathetic. None of them denied to me that they had done the crime they were in for. Look, even the murderer I interviewed, he appeared to be very sorrowful for what he had done. He told me he had destroyed many lives, including his own family s life. There is no point me judging him, he s judged himself. Others were clear that they didn t care what they did and would do it again, so they are not going to change. The only person that was very difficult for me not to judge was a sex offender who downloaded child pornography. He felt he shouldn t be in prison and see s no harm in child pornography. I refused to shake his hand and he didn t like that. From what you experienced, what are the biggest issues currently faced by the prison? Drugs are a massive issue. I met a guy who had a drink problem 20 years ago when he went into prison. With no access to alcohol in the prison he started smoking cannabis but that shows up in your blood system for 30-40 days, so he started snorting heroin, which only stays in your system for a couple of days. So from an alcohol addiction, he s become a junkie in prison. That happens a lot. Barlinnie once prescribed more methadone than any other prison in the world. There is a massive drug issue in prisons now, which reflects a wider problem in society, but then magnifies it. The NPS s (new psycho-active substances) are undetectable and can be rolled and smoked in a cigarette. It doesn t smell, and depending on how much has been sprayed on that paper you could possibly flatline. Ambulances are called out to Barlinnine on a regular basis because of issues with drugs. NPS s can be sprayed on to the letters sent into prison and then cut into postage stamp size squares and sold. Kids paintings are sent in and the blue sky is all liquid valium. Drugs sell for five times more in prison than what they sell for on the street. There are some people who go into prison with drugs inside them banked, which are difficult to detect. They are there on purpose, to make money. Also, we need to look at why there is such a dramatic increase in sexual offenders in prison now. Currently 15 per cent of inmates are sex offenders. We are getting better at detecting it, and the Saville enquiry means more people are coming forward with historic cases, which is why so many of those offenders are so old now. But what does it tell us about society? And what are we doing wrong? There are some big challenges ahead. Bringing in the smoking ban in Scotland is going to be massive issue. Virtually everyone in Barlinnie smokes. The law is to protect the prison officers from inhaling secondary smoke it. But if you are locked up for 22 hours there s not much else to do and being prevented from having your nicotine is going to create some serious issues for you. What surprised you the most, of all the stories you heard and people you met? 6
Probably the amount of weapons that have been seized and the nature of them. Also I was surprised by how good the food was actually. Did you have any concerns for your own safety at any time during filming? Well, I found myself cutting up sandwiches in the kitchen with an inmate who had stabbed someone in the head. But seriously, you don t take anything for granted in prisons because funnily enough they are full of very violent people. Many of whom simply don t consider the consequences of their actions, so you always have to be mindful. Attacks are increasing, both to officers and fellow inmates. We did some defence training beforehand as part of an agreement with the Scottish Prison Service on the best way to defend yourself should someone attack you. Thankfully no-one did. As one prison officer said, Never rule anything out. Yes, I m a dad now but being a father isn t going to stop me doing what I love. It s also how I pay the mortgage! Did the experience change your view of prison officers and the work that they do? What an amazing bunch of people. With attacks on prison officers are going up, I personally don t think they are appreciated enough. In my opinion, they don t get paid enough for what they do. With longer life expectancies than ever before, we now have an ageing population in prison. So the officers are having to become carers and psychiatric nurses. We are asking a hell of a lot of them. The oldest prisoners in Barlinnie are 86 and 87 and they are sex offenders. A young prison officer earns less in one year than it costs to keep a single prisoner behind bars. As a result of your time at Barlinnie, what is your personal view on the reasons for high levels of re-offenders and whether prison rehabilitation works in the UK? We have to look at why we have so many revolving door prisoners. There are people I met that never want to leave. Some of the guys just become institutionalised, they can t deal with the outside. I met one guy and every time he gets released, he walks straight down the road, robs a shop, throws a brick through the window and he s back inside by the weekend. Time after time. Because it s the only home he knows. We have a massive problem in the UK with reoffenders. What do we do to tackle that? Are prisons there to rehabilitate or are they there to punish? Can they achieve both of those things at the same time? I didn t see much evidence of that. Almost every inmate I spoke to said that no-one can make them change. They have to do it themselves. But if you go back to the same old environment and the same old friends, you are more likely to be back behind bars. In order to break the cycles we ve got to make big changes. How do we do that as a society? Please credit: Ross Kemp Behind Bars Inside Barlinnie Thursday 2 November at 9pm on ITV 7