Re your story on High Down prison (Prison governor denies crisis despite changes, April 3) unannounced visits are they only way you or anyone else is going to see the real problems going on inside, and what stresses there are around both for the inmate and that of visitors.
Oh! right forgot that the visits are from 2.00 - 4.30pm that is a joke! Today even I managed to visit and yes I got to visit from 2pm until 3.20pm that is the best I have managed. and that is only because I (like many others) had to queue up outside at 9am to get a raffle ticket to go into the visiting hall at a reasonable time say 2pm if we are lucky, otherwise you can wait until 3pm to get into the hall due to the raffle ticket numbers and the time it takes to be checked before visiting.
On more than one occasion I have turned up at 11 am to collect a raffle ticket and have not been able to get across to visiting hall until 3pm-ish to be informed at 3.40pm that (at times mostly 3.30pm) that we had to leave, I had informed the officer that I had only just got there I was told I should have come earlier! Not funny as I work, so trying to get in a visit is difficult enough and by having to have a whole day off it means I lose around £100 a day which I and others cannot afford.
Oh, surprisingly, they have changed the routine a little today as from 14th April by some miracle you can visit again in the morning, something which they stopped some time ago. Which is a plus and obviously happening due to outside pressure, for which I for one are grateful, as I will only have to lose four hours pay for instead of a full day's pay, and I won’t have to queue up for a ticket for hours at a time.
I don’t think in the eight months that I have been visiting that I have been in the hall until 4.30pm more than twice and that was only because we did not get in until 3pm due to lock downs. So, no, they are not giving anybody anything by saying they are the only prison that has visiting from 2pm - 4.30pm. It looks good on paper but it is not a true reflection on what happens.
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