The truth about working in a men’s prison... as a female psychologist

Yes, working as a woman in a men’s prison is hard – but so too is the knowledge that the majority of these prisoners are suffering from some kind of undiagnosed mental illness, says Jane Brown*

Inmates on cleaning duty at HMP Belmarsh (Rex)

The prisoner sitting in front of me looks me in the eye. He is a dangerous man, inside for a litany of violent offences. He begins with a slight smile. “The last assessment I had like this I couldn’t deal with the eye contact they were giving me, so I stabbed their eyes out with a pen,” he says. Of course, he may have been exaggerating, but how would I know?

Welcome to my world. He was one of my first assessments as a psychologist in a category C prison and was deemed high risk because he had a history of taking hostages. So should I have made eye contact or not? He had a magnetic personality and was very manipulative. He came from a troubled background, was brought up in foster care and was in prison as soon as he was of age.

But I got him laughing and he calmed down. He was one of the few prisoners who didn’t ask me out. Maybe he didn’t like my eyes. It was an abrupt introduction to prison life, which is a dizzying world laced with mental health problems, sexual tension, corruption and the ever-present threat of violence. But out of it all, surprisingly, there emerges some compassion. There is hope this might eventually lead to a more enlightened prison regime and – hopefully – fewer prisoners. The 600 prisoners in my jail create an atmosphere of brittle calm, but with an underlying tension – one of fear and menace.