A file in the National Archives at Kew charts how the prison authorities responded to the audacious – and embarrassing – escape of two prisoners from Gartree in Leicestershire, by helicopter, one Thursday afternoon in December 1987.
A Home Office file HO 391/760 in 1988 (while the Home Office was in charge of prisons – before a spin-off in the 2000s to a Ministry of Justice) discussed making exercise times for prisoners unpredictable, and changing the location of exercising, for example at Brixton prison in south london, ‘to minimise the risk of a winched helicopter lift from A Yard’. An anti-helicopter screen as a ‘non-standard item’ would have to see specific Treasury authorisation’. Indeed when Brixton asked for a net for D Wing’s exercise yard, the Treasury replied with doubt that it was cost-effective. D Wing housed those relative handful of prisoners posing a special security risk – such as armed robbers, and terrorists (such as those accused of the bombing of the Conservative Party conference at Brighton in 1984). The risk of a helicopter landing was one thing – ‘fouling wires’ strung across a yard could make that dangerous. Another thing was the winching from an airborne helicopter of a prisoner, which called for a denser ‘screen’. A Wing at Brixton had such a screen installed, which cost ยฃ100,000 and took six weeks, around December 1985. Brixton wanted D Wing to have a similar screen.
Rated
In July 1988, the Home Office was proposing that Category A prisoners should be rated as exceptional, high or standard risk. Those given one of the higher two ratings should exercise only in screened areas, in case of a helicopter escape attempt. Singled out was the prisoner McEvoy, convicted of the Brink’s Mat gold bullion robbery of 1983, who the Home Office had moved from prison to prison to disrupt an escape attempt. Such screens were not unknown: Leicester Prison had one installed in 1981, as it housed prisoners with the motive and money to use a ‘copter.
A paper on file dated December 1985 described such a screen, mounted above the fence of an exercise yard, 17 feet above the ground, and with a standard six-inch square wire mesh. The Home Office civil servants acknowledged the ‘claustrophobic’ effect, ‘of what will obviously be a large cage’. The paper called it ‘repugnant’ that an unconvicted prisoner (that is, someone there on remand before trial) could not be allowed out under the open sky. The Home Office concluded that ‘in the interests of security there was no alternative but to install a screen’. The Home Office noted that Leicester (and later Brixton) inmates accepted the mesh. The Home Office decided against a formal announcement, because (careful of its image as ever) it didn’t want ‘to excite greater interest in the screen’ and the ‘inhabitants’ of Brixton Prison.
Memo
The governor at Brixton in July 1988 wrote a memo about how to secure the exercise yard. After the Gartree escape, Brixton had stretched wires across the yardsDuring A Wing’s exercise, the prison put a look-out on the hospital roof. The officer at the observation post would draw a radio; and binoculars from the dog handler’s ‘foul weather box’. In April 1987, Brixton had a visit from the junior Home Office minister Lord Caithness. A Home Office paper admitted ‘that the resources available for building work are finite and need to be channelled so far as possible towards place creating projects’. Woolwich Prison for example was due to have a screen …. in the early 1990s.
Parkhurst
In February 1987, the Home Office was considering whether to refurbish and improve security at Parkhurst (which historically held prisoners requiring greater security because of the authorities’ ability to control access to the Isle of Wight), or Long Lartin, Frankland, and the new prison at Full Sutton. Parkhurst and Leicester were then the two SSUs (special security units), but Parkhurst did not have any protection against a helicopter. The prison building programme looked four years ahead, from the financial year 1987-88. Examples of the larger proposed spends included ยฃ2m for a replacement perimeter wall and a ยฃ66,000 fire alarm at Lincoln; and a security alarm and a Geophone inner fence for Full Sutton. The ยฃ110,000 or so for a mesh for an exercise yard, then, had to be budgeted for. A January 1987 paper about Parkhurst acknowledged a lack of anti-helicopter protection, besides ‘the poor state and inadequate nature of the physical security and the alarm systems of which we were not previously aware’. The options would cost more than ยฃ1m, described as ‘daunting enough’. Any such work could not begin before September 1987, and if so, other work on prisons in the south east England region would suffer.
