I found this disturbing. I was in Reading Jail about this time, another Victorian relic, and the regime is a reflection of the governor. In the time I was there there were no fights, no assaults, the screws ( all local cos it was a local jail) were all reasonable and respectful, we had some long bang up days and some days we got out and played volleyball in the yard. It was friendly and relaxed. The governor was a good natured man and ran a relaxed prison. This strangeways shit hole is a disgrace, it reflects the shitbag running it. Hard discipline and hard routine takes more effort to enforce and causes pressure to build up as petty injustices just mount up daily As we saw in 1990 when they destroyed the place. The punishment is the loss of liberty, not the routine that’s enforced while having the loss of liberty. I did the short sharp shock at Haslar, I did Portland as well, it doesn’t work as a deterrent. It costs much more and gives licence to officers who have a nasty streak to exercise that streak. These places are full of the social casualties of society, ( plus some who need to be executed or locked away for ever). Mostly they suffered from childhood traumas, no father, council care homes, low intelligence low educational attainment etc. mostly they can’t be helped and eventually mostly they grow out of it and calm down into their lives of drinking, and benefits and just bumping along the bottom. I was an exception, got a good job, I even worked in one screws house afterwards and he trusted me to do the job unsupervised in a part of his house, with tea and biscuits laid on. But custody had no influence on any thing once I was out. It was forgotten. Prison works in the sense of Michael Howard’s statement that while you’re locked up you’re not committing crime. But it doesn’t deter anyone. They’ve tried everything, the Victorians tried to be progressive,( compared to transportation for nicking a loaf or hanging a sheep thief) but you can’t stop crime. There were 44,000 in prison in my time, now there’s 80,000 plus. So what’s going on? It’s clearly not working. Society is sick, there’s no cure.
@@kinkyafro3150 the doctor in Armley was called Dr No...nothing.. straight rip .. methadone I was on 80 MLS ... nobody ever died of an overdose...yeah ask any Leeds lads
@@-xirx- I hope so, the fundamental issue is a problem with society. Kids without fathers score terribly on every metric from health to life time earnings, mental well being drug abuse violent etc. so that would be a good starting point, but there’s no way the woke brigade will go along . That would be an admission that feminism and no fault divorce and social security for unmarried mothers was a big failure . The prison population is double what it was in my day. Prison only stops crime while the prisoner is incarcerated but there’s no rehabilitation at all. Infact in my own experience there was no way that any of us young offenders could be rehabilitated by counselling or reason. But when I was working I wasn’t involved in crime. And then I grew up and stopped being a total twat. But we can’t just conjure up jobs for a million young people. I see no solution that doesn’t involve a cultural reconstruction. Which won’t happen. The USA is where we’re ultimately going.
You a russian troll or just thick? Crime was much worse back then. Unemployment through the roof. The specials wrote "ghost town" about how miserable life was. As the historian Dominic Sandbrook wrote about the early 80s, it was a period of "unprecedented misery".
It was not WWII where he got burnt, it was the anti British liberation war in Malaysia during the 1950's... if we are referring to that governor geezer with the square glasses.
It’s amazing to see the governor predicting the riot in 1980 in his own words “how long can a man be locked up for 23/24 hours a day ?” 9 years later he got the answer he must of been saying told you so
I heard the screws were all steaming drunk after lunch and it was like a night out in Leeds City centre each evening. Then again I heard how many times the screws got truly gassed each morning at slop out. It was a routine thing. Get gassed in the morning get hammered then pummeled the offenders after dinner. I got this information from the yt channel ' Tales from the Jails '.
@@BennyMcGibbon that's a load of BS Benny boy, the screws wouldn't dare beat the inmates or get drunk they would get smashed to bits by the lads. its live and let live,in there, there's obviously the odd exception dont believe all you see on YT kidda xxx
I reformed myself, well just grew up, spent many years in places like this, I'm 68 now and still get flash backs to what happened all those years ago, guys killing themselves, guys trying to kill each other, screws bullying everyone, but I guess since the tellies got put in its even worse as that's just another excuse to keep people in a cell all day....
As they used to say at school about firming plurals with words that end in y, "change the y to an i and add es". We also don't ever use apostrophes to form plurals.
This series is priceless, thanks for putting it up. A valuable snapshot of another sort of society that is pretty much hidden from sight. To me, it's pretty clear why the riots happened. I wonder if the same kind of honest documentary was done about Wandsworth before the more recent riots there.
@@thefuturist8864 You may want to donate most of your money to giving them a great life, but it is supposed to be punishment not a reward. I expect their 'free' life was crap too.
Brilliant documentary series. Prisons seem utterly pointless. There has to be another way to deal with these damaged people. God bless the people who work in these hall holes.
When you are in front of the governor and the screws said you had a machine gun the governor would find you guilty of that and every prisoner knew that
Justice is only to be served by the poor masses. We’ve seen so many wrong doings by organisations like the BBC. SAVILLE ‘we knew nothing til he was dead’. Think about that.
Film is full of left wing nonsense. It's very simple. If you don't want to go to prison, don't commit crimes. It's called accountability, something we sadly lacked in 1980 and still lack today. Individuals need to be held accountable for their actions.
@@vtrmcs to solve the problem of criminality we need rehabilitation not punishment ...the hate factories breed contempt and beget violence frustration and status quo...90 pc of prisoners are serving dead end time for drug addiction entrenched in society by poor education abuse as children and trauma they don't know how to deal with.....punishment as spectacle is self demonising... rehabilitation is the way forward as the Scandinavian countries teach and have taught us....read the book disapline and punishment by the French philosophor michael Foucault for a more definitive answer to the question and point I have tried to raise...he is wiser and more erudite than i could hope to be.....the panopticon model of victorian prison architecture model that Jeremy Bentham devised is to instill constant presure and the feeling that 1 man can constantly watch the whole body of the prison... deliberately to create insecurities and fear among the inmates...The security is modelled around the same punishment and demoralising atmosphere as the architecture....it breeds subconscious contempt and hate ..and...no rehabilitation is ever achieved or could ever be achievable under the panopticon system...... emancipation can only be achievable under rehabilitation...a fact that is only now bring addressed today by special units and compassion and education.......the old prison system was untenable and the strangeways riots were the result and the beginning of change......this is long-winded and refers to the old model...still mostly in place ...it does not work...will never work.....and so it goes....and infinitum ...
had a 3 month stay here in 2007 till i was relocation to rizley. not as bad as conditions of these lads but depending on whatbwing, with different gangs somedays your french fries were like nails made of potatos rock solid and always rock cake for pudding my pad mate had double puddings
I have no criminal record and decent job and got 4 days remand for wasting police time which I got bail then charge got thrown out…during those 4 days I was made to strip fully twice and some old guard just stared for ages. Prick of a guy.
Because one of the tests they didn't show is known as the cough and drop,where they grab your balls and ask you to cough .not sure why, maybe to check for a hernia.
Further to my previous comment which i made 2 hours ago i have now watched this again.I must admit that i DO now find myself laughing @ what has gone on with the doctor at the medical.Needing to check his balls is one thing but to stay sitting as you put the stethoscope right up to his chest with his meat and veg just hanging there DOES now seem somewhat "SAVILLE-ESQUE!.
I think we coddle prisoners too much these days and we're way too accepting of any excuse about 'mental health'... but telling a suicidal man who's sitting in his own waste that he's being "rather silly" is something I'm very glad is left in the past. I can see why we've gone too far in the other direction. It's the lesser evil.
Some of these blokes are proper plonkers, the one at 33:20 who tried to escape and then asked the board of visitors why his been restricted when he has visitor's and not allowed to use the gym. what a wally.
Food didn't look terrible. Roast spuds and gravy. The meat looked a bit strange with all that oversized marbling (fat). Must have been very low cost chuck. But have you seen the food they get in America? It's not even hot, they call it mystery sludge. Yet still the cost to house one prisoner is the same amount of money a CEO gets paid.
One wonders what the level of recidivism was? We all deserve second chances. How many of the prison population at Strangeways went on to lead a normal life on the outside? It would have been nice to get some stats.. An interesting study nonetheless of the penal system at that time.
I know the bloke at 1.50 folding the clothes, his name is Fred, he had a fight in a pub in Salford and potted the other dude which is why he was there. He never got into trouble again. He died a few years back of the big C.
there was actually a follow up programme to this series made around 2000 they caught up with a few of the prisoners from this series 20 years later...you can probably find it on youtube if you reseach it a bit ..can't remember the title of the programme tho
The age old question: what do you want from your prison system? Revenge or rehabilitation? Revenge is a short burst of satisfaction for society, but a long term headache and expense of unrehabilitated and useless men revolving in and out of prison. Rehabilitation is a long term success for society, as people leaving the system and reintegrating into society as useful members. You choose.
Dyslexia plays a massive part. Perfectly intelligent men end up frustrated and underachieving. Add childhood abuse and a meaningless life. What’s there to lose?
I am dyslexic, but never found it necessary to be a crook. The actress Susan Hampshire was one of many dyslexic stars who dealt with her problems outside of prison. Stop making excuses for lazy losers.
I remember in the eighties when I went to the GP surgery. Behind the main desk were these huge spiral towers full of folders and documents. The ladies ( yes ladies) would have to climb up step ladders and spin these big circular filing shelves to find your file.
The guy on report for the chicken stew bones swearing is a wrong 'un, you can tell he'd be back in about a month after being left out because he'd chin someone in a pub for looking at him funny.
Jesus wept remembering tv me mama younger brothers on YP we only lived down the road she use to ask us to shout up at the back and ask what they need anything bringing up it was a god awful place however they grew up got good jobs had families only because they knew they were loved prison is not always the answer or solution to certain offenders
The medical here, which so many commentators seem to find strange, has been carried out that way since time immemorial!. joining the Forces or even the police, that's what was done!. As mentioned elsewhere it was to locate a hernia.Coughing causes bollox to "jump" slightly upward if no hernia is present.It cannot be denied however that, if an individual was so inclined, a certain sexual thrill was gauranteed.So, todays lesson....."if you don't want your bollox played with then DON'T be a squaddie/sailor/airman or copper.Most of all DON'T be a PRISON SLAG whining about prison officers/"nonce" doctors/"Bacon" inmates or "wrong 'uns"...YOU are the "wrong 'un" that's WHY you're in the nick and 99% of the population are not.. Finally, those people who say they have NEVER experienced this examination must have been prisoners more recently as the very fact that the doctor is carrying this out in front of a BBC camera and therefore the Home Office and the entire world mean that it IS indeed...standard practice. Final note.Many police officers who went through this sued for sexual assault a year or two ago.Not sure what the outcome was but obviously the coppers weren't happy about what happened to them either.
Quite a lot, when I spent a short spell in here,back in 73, you were only allowed a radio, Now you can have a computer system, and other non essential luxuries.
the name goes back many centuries ago to the days when there was a river that ran thru that area that had a mysterious current to it that created channels of water...thats what I read ...I know the centre of manchester has several underground rivers / canals that used to be open
The ( interesting ? ) factoid was ... that , this prison ( ahem ? ) doctor was ( allegedly ) a bigger ( secret ) sex offender than ( some ? ) of it's inmates ( PLEASE ! comment ) ..... DAVE™🛑
The doctor In Armley was a wrong un too....strangways doctor was notorious for putting his hands inside mens arses on the pretex of curiosity.....fact.....trust me
Watching this interesting video ... made me think that this ( doctor ) was quite a bit creepy , but then diagnostic methods were probably different all those years ago , he will have retired and possibly not be alive ? @@tkoteacher1707
