The male prison where a transgender prisoner killed herself despite being on suicide watch was understaffed, chaotic and in a poor state of repair, a court has heard.
Just one prison officer was patrolling A wing at HMP Leeds the night Vikki Thompson was found dead in her cell, an inquest jury at Wakefield coroner’s court was told on Thursday.
The 21-year-old, who had been living as female since she was 10, was found in the dark on 13 November 2015 because the lights in her cell were not working, the inquest heard. Officers and healthcare workers had to fumble around with torches as they tried to revive her.
The officer who discovered Thompson’s body described the chaotic scenes on A wing on the night Thompson hanged herself. Jonathan Stanfield had been working the day shift when he was offered overtime to cover A wing. He admitted he was surprised to find he was the only officer assigned to the wing, which houses the most vulnerable prisoners. Usually there would be two people on the early evening shift, he said.
When he did his hourly check on Thompson, he noticed she appeared unconscious in the gloom of her cell. “The instructions are that we are not to go into a cell on our own,” Stanfield said, telling the jury he ignored the guidance and went in anyway. His colleague, Paul Shortall, the next on the scene, told the court that prisoners had previously lured lone officers into their cells with fake nooses and then attacked them.
Neither officer had received first aid training for more than 20 years and had to wait for healthcare staff to arrive and attempt CPR.
The court has previously heard that Thompson had changed her name when she was 17, but had never applied for a gender recognition certificate and had not had any gender reassignment surgery.
Under prison guidelines in England and Wales, inmates are sent to a jail appropriate to their birth gender unless they have received a gender recognition certificate.
The inquest has heard evidence from Thompson’s boyfriend, Robert Steele, who said she wanted to be sent to a female jail and had written him a letter threatening to “do something silly”.
Thompson had been recalled to prison on a remand order on 19 October after breaching the terms of a suspended sentence she had received for shoplifting, the jury has heard.
Another prison officer cried in court as she recalled talking with Thompson two days before she died, when she was wearing female clothes and carrying a handbag, ready for a court appearance. “She seemed really settled on A wing,” said Sinead Dennis. “She was happy. She asked me about the colour of my hair, which was green, and she talked about going to secondhand shops.”
Thompson was optimistic that she would not be in prison for much longer, Dennis added, describing her as someone who was “always smiling”.
But Stanfield, who has now given up prison work to become a stay-at-home dad, described how Thompson was bullied by other prisoners. During an earlier stay in HMP Leeds, he said he witnessed “certain individuals [who] were spitting and being abusive” towards her.
The night Thompson died was “not an ideal evening”, said Stanfield. One prisoner had barricaded himself in the staff toilets, staff in another wing had had to wear protective gear to enter a cell in the segregation unit and fire alarms had been going off “all night”, he said. “There was an incredible amount of noise coming from segregation as well as smoke,” Stanfield said, adding: “It was just one thing after another.”
Stanfield told the jury that was why he had not checked on Thompson at random irregular intervals every hour, a requirement in her care plan, but had visited her cell on the hour once an hour instead. He admitted he did not talk to her during the observations, despite prison guidance saying officers should “actively engage” with a prisoner on suicide watch. He said he did not know Thompson had self harmed twice during previous nightshifts, only that she had said she wanted to kill herself.
The inquest continues.
