Episode 13 - Personal Officers

With Snowball's arrival on G wing Jim Fenner seems, once again, to be taking the 'personal' in Personal Officer rather too far.

A Personal Officer is allocated to each prisoner at, or soon after, they arrive in the prison. Each officer working in the residential part of the prison is Personal Officer to a number of prisoners. Their job is to get to know these prisoners, provide a first point of contact if they need to talk to a staff member and work with them on activities such as sentence planning. Sentence planning is the process used with convicted prisoners to decide what offending behaviour courses, work and other activities a prisoner should become involved in during the prison sentence. The prisoner is actively involved in it, and sentence planning meetings between the personal officer and the prisoner play a very important part.

The aim of the system is to provide a named individual responsible for each prisoner and at some prisons the system works well. At others, particularly the busy 'local' prisons where prisoners move in and out, to court and back, and once convicted are often moved swiftly to other prisons, it is more difficult. Because of the fast turnover of prisoners and their own shift patterns many officers at those prisons have very limited opportunities to meet and talk to the prisoners allocated to them. When prisoners serving longer sentences are sent to the prisons where they will serve most of their time, the personal officer scheme has an opportunity to work more easily with better relationships developing - but not of the sort Jim Fenner is after!