TWO quite different conversations stick in the mind of former prison governor Susie Richardson as she reflects on three-and-a-half years at HMP La Moye.
The first – not long after she started – was with a prison officer whose behaviour she had challenged. Why had he done what he did, she wanted to know?
“He told me that’s how things were in prisons, and when I asked where he’d got that idea from, he said he’d seen it in a film. Of course, everybody in that prison had been recruited locally and had only worked in that prison but I felt really offended that a fellow professional had come to think our profession could be guided by films instead of by the literature, or by the jurisdictions that are doing things really well,” Ms Richardson said.
Her second conversation was much more recent and it was with a prisoner, not a member of staff. It took place in the showers he was meticulously cleaning.
“He told me he was really proud; proud of their cleanliness and of the prison as a whole, and he said he felt really responsible for the prison’s success. Then, he showed me his arms and he told me that, when he was fighting the establishment, he used to harm himself because it was a way he could really cause chaos and show he was anti-the-system. ‘Look gov’, he said, showing me those arms: ‘My wounds have healed, and I don’t self-harm any more because I’m putting all of my energy into good stuff.’ It was really moving but also really affirming about the literature around rehabilitation that says if you empower people and if you give them responsibility, they become more responsible individuals,” she said.
To describe the change in outlook implied by those two conversations as “a journey” inevitably risks sounding like a cliché but the transformation Ms Richardson describes nonetheless requires a word that conveys both the time required to achieve it, and the extent of that change.
Separated as they were by nearly three years, perhaps they sum up the former prison governor’s approach better than anything else. They make her valedictory words on standing down the more poignant.
“It was difficult for me because I feel like there was more we could have done. We absolutely could have become the beacon [for] the British Isles, and it’s sad not to have had that opportunity. And you know it’s the dream living in an island this size and running a little prison service with so much potential. It was sad but it did feel – it does feel – like it was the right decision, and I am assured that the prison continues to be a good prison.
“But I miss the staff and I miss the prisoners because we were on a real journey together, and I think some of them were very disappointed when I resigned; and that’s a big responsibility when I had developed their trust. I was very conscious of that and that’s why I took so much time to meet with those staff and prisoners to explain that I wasn’t abandoning them. I wasn’t giving up on them,” she said.
When Ms Richardson took up her post in 2021, the former deputy governor of Winchester Prison was conscious of having been appointed to effect just such a change and bring Jersey’s prison up-to-date. She led a group of colleagues – from La Moye Prison and from the probation service – to Norway to learn from jails with the best outcomes in the world. By comparison, La Moye seemed “like an island within an island”, its imposing perimeter fence effectively shutting-off a world of opportunity and possibility from those condemned to punitive incarceration.
Soon, however, things began to change. Expertise within the government – whether on employment, education or drug rehabilitation – began to flow through the gates of the prison under Ms Richardson’s influence. Meanwhile, she began a campaign of public engagement, going out to every group in the community prepared to listen to her. She offered a simple message: there was no truth in the mischievous tag “Hotel La Moye” bandied about by some; hers was definitely a prison but, above all, a rehabilitative one.
She explained: “Where Scandinavia has made such a big shift is in citizens taking responsibility for the safety of their communities and, rather than judging and ostracising somebody who commits an offence, the community takes responsibility for asking what went wrong. And so we developed the branding ‘releasing better neighbours’ which we took unashamedly from Norway. It really resonated in Jersey because people here know those in prison – they know they are their neighbours, their family members or their loved ones. Taking that responsibility has been a major shift.”
Actions, of course, speak louder than words. The former governor talks with conviction about the importance of “procedural justice”, of not simply “fobbing off” prisoners and being prepared instead to banish a blame culture among staff reluctant to take on risks to improve the environment. She recalled her first prison council meetings, an innovative forum to allow prisoners and staff to discuss issues of concern. It was not working.
“When I sat in on a couple, I saw prisoners becoming disheartened and disengaged, and the consequence of that is that they took less responsibility for the success of the place. We were also struggling for admin to take minutes, so we turned it on its head, and we gave prisoners that responsibility. We democratically recruited reps from each wing, and we made sure that the council was properly representative. It wasn’t just the noisiest people but prisoners who understood their role was to represent and advocate for other people. Giving people a voice in prisons is really profound.
“If something couldn’t happen, we’d be really honest about it and we’d explain why, and we’d allow them to challenge that as well, because we’ve got really smart people in that prison who have run businesses and have got all sorts of skills. They really held us to account and the benefit to the prison has been huge because it means that we’ve really listened to prisoners, and I think it grew their confidence in us,” she said.
In the week Ms Richardson received her medal marking 20 years in the prison service, her evident passion for the job serves to emphasise the irony of her departure announced just two months ago. It was nothing, she emphasises, to do with the way the approach she has described was going down with staff at La Moye.
“No, they were very engaged, and I’m delighted to see that they’re continuing with exactly what we were doing. We had made good progress. I’m really proud of what we did together in three-and-a-half years, and delighted to see it embedded and continuing.
“My frustration was increasingly with the wider organisation and some of the processes and policies. The ‘prisony’ bits were quite easy because they were within my gift, and I took people with me, and they’re continuing to grow and thrive. It was more around some of the wider stuff in government, around a number of issues that were being raised that weren’t being gripped; particularly, I was very involved in equality, diversity and inclusion. I was the exec sponsor for Shoulder to Shoulder, which was an inclusivity group in Justice and Home Affairs, and I felt that when sometimes I raised things, there wasn’t a will to address those issues.
“I’ve worked with really good people but I experienced a fear around a lack of will to grip some of the underlying issues, and that paralleled with what I found in the prison,” she said.
During her time at La Moye, Ms Richardson witnessed three Chief Ministers, four Justice and Home Affairs Ministers, five chief executives and at least a dozen finance and human relations partners, a rate of turnover she believes contributes to what she calls “a psychological lack of safety” within the public sector in grappling with issues she says have lingered for years. Consequently, the sector has preferred to reach so-called compromise agreements with senior officers with grievances, effectively paying them off, rather than addressing their underlying concerns.
“I’ve seen far too many people leave with compromise agreements, which means that we don’t learn. I knew there was something a bit weird about the Government of Jersey when I contacted my predecessor before coming to Jersey and he said he couldn’t tell me anything because he had signed a compromise agreement.
“There are a number of these legacy issues that I was picking up and trying to resolve. When I asked for HR advice, very often it was advice about a compromise agreement that I got instead of grappling with the actual issues. It was explained to me that there’s a real will for harmony but I think that there’s a risk of a kind of false harmony [where] things don’t actually get resolved. That’s when the toxic stuff creeps in,” she said.
Unconvinced that there was any appetite to support her with the remaining challenges at the prison or with “the wider cultural things in government”, she elected to resign. Three-and-a-half years in the government of Jersey is actually a very long time if you’re trying to make improvement, she observed, adding: “I didn’t always feel heard in some of those frustrations.”
When the news first emerged, there was what she describes as an “eerie silence” but a meeting with Scrutiny provided the opportunity to outline ways she thought things might be improved. Having left, she now has a voice – she is not one of those who concluded a compromise agreement – to speak out on the need for better human resources processes to avoid further “casualties” from the service.
“I’ve seen a lot of good people leave government in the time I’ve been here; really well-intentioned people, really successful in their own professions, and it’s a shame that we don’t retain those people better. I see people leaving with pain and I didn’t want to be one of those people,” she said.
Ms Richardson identifies some cause for optimism in the appointment of a new government head of human resources who is committed to “sorting the basics”. Too late, of course, in her case; so what does the future hold in store?
“I’m a public servant at heart: my passion and experience is prisons. I’ve been overwhelmed at the number of opportunities that have been presented to me in Jersey since resigning but I’m being very cautious about what I go into because, whatever I do, I also still have a contract with the English prison service, and they’re very keen to have me back as an experienced and decent leader.
“But my children are very settled in schools here, so we’re committed to Jersey for the foreseeable future. I’m looking forward to enjoying the Island without working for a little bit. Then, any type of work I go into will need to be as meaningful as running a little prison service. I’m keen that, whatever I do next, I’m able to continue to give back at least as much as the Island has given to us as a family.”
She offers a final word for her former colleagues: “The quality of people that I worked with in the prison was mostly exceptional. We attracted and retained wonderful people, particularly among our more recent recruits.
“We’d really moved away from recruiting security guards to recruiting rehabilitative professionals, and there are some wonderful people working in that prison,” she said.
