Prison inspector "kept awake" by shameful treatment of women inmates

Prison inspector "kept awake" by shameful treatment of women inmates. The treatment of women prisoners in England and Wales is shameful, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons said in a lecture on the University of Sussex campus yesterday (Wednesday 29 February). Nick Hardwick said the terrible levels of self-mutilation and despair in one women's unit "kept me awake at night" and the responsibility lies squarely at the door of successive governments. In a highly-critical lecture - organised by the Sussex Law School - he said the circumstances of the women held in the Keller Unit of Styal Prison in Wilmslow, Cheshire, were "more shocking and distressing than anything I had yet seen on an inspection". "We can't go on like this," he said. "Prisons, particularly as they are currently run, are simply the wrong place for so many of the distressed, damaged or disturbed women they hold. "I think the treatment and conditions in which a small minority of the most disturbed women are held is - in relation to their needs - simply unacceptable.