"The system is wrong"
For nine years, 26 year old Leon Fenton had been in and out of prison for various gang related crimes, including drug offences and serious assaults. His first spell in prison was at only 15 years old, five years after he'd been initiated into the gang by no other than his own father. He says that this was a path he was dragged down, “did I have a choice?” He asks, “I were forced into that life, at ten years old,” he says.
By his own admission, it took Leon a few years to realise that what he was being taught to do by his father and acquaintances was wrong, but by then it was too late – he'd already been bred into a world that was hard to escape. He describes his former life as hectic and says that he was always having to look over his shoulder for police and rival gangs. What's more, leaving a gang through choice is a near impossible task, but Leon says he was lucky that, when the time came for him to leave, he wasn't held back, “it doesn't normally work out like that,” he says.
For Leon, the realisation that he wanted to change his life came when he was viciously attacked in a rival drug dispute, “I got stabbed 15 times, it were quite brutal, I died twice and were revived,” he explains. However, it was a few years before he put this realisation into practice and, despite his savage experience, he spent a few more spells in prison before leaving the gang and his criminality behind him.
The major turning point for Leon happened in prison, when he was put on stable medication for a previous diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. His condition had contributed to his violent offences and imprisonment, but he hadn't known this was the cause until he had received the right treatment, “I were a very aggressive, angry young person and I've just calmed right down,” he says, “the medication's got a lot to do with it, best decision I made was to go onto that medication,” he adds.
Now, with his criminal past behind him, Leon works as a peer advisor for St Giles Trust, helping ex-offenders move their lives forward following time in prison. It's his own experiences in prison that Leon draws on, to explain where the system is going wrong and how it needs to change.
He remembers his own first time in prison as terrifying, “first time in prison you're gonna be scared, anyone who tells you they weren't are lying,” Leon says. Reliving his first night at Wetherby Young Offenders Institution, he continues: “I can remember crying the first night I got into my cell, the first time I heard the door bang it's quite a distinctive, loud, horrible, echoey bang.”
However, despite his initial fear, Leon soon realised that for him and his 'boys' inside, prison was an asset, “on a day to day basis it was just carrying on my old life basically,” he explains, “I was getting drugs brought into prison, selling drugs in prison, so it was just the same, hectic life,” he continues. Leon's experience in prison speaks of a wider problem with the prison system, with 31% of prisoners admitting it is easy to get drugs in prison, according to the Centre for Social Justice.
This is one of the many reasons that the system is failing, according to Leon, who believes it breeds criminals, “you're sending someone to jail for theft and he's talking to people that have all sorts of huge fraud skills,” he says, “he's going in for theft and coming out a fraudster,” he adds, using this as an example of how prisons breed criminal activity through association. Leon attributes some of this to a lack of prison staff, “with the cuts there's not as many to a wing,” he says, “but on the other hand, their attitudes need to change, a lot of them will just look the other way,” he continues.
Prison staff shortages are a rising concern in the UK, with the Prison Reform Trust estimating that the number of prison staff employed in public sector jails has fallen by 30% in the last six years. This means that there are almost 14,000 fewer staff looking after almost 450 more people, which may be why prison staff have become disengaged – they simply can't keep up.
But for Leon, having spent time in prison with such a debilitating mental health condition, this is where he really wants to see a change, “putting mentally ill people in prison is totally wrong,” he says, “sending people [to prison] for having an illness, punishing them with imprisonment, just feel the weight of that,” he continues. It's not just prison staff shortages that Leon sees as a problem, but the manner in which they carry out their job, which he believes directly affects inmates with a mental health problem.
Leon remembers spending 18 hours a day locked alone in his cell, “imagine what that's gonna do to a mentally ill person, it's gonna send them stir crazy,” he says. Being alone for so long invariably made Leon more challenging for the staff to deal with, so he says that they would lock him up for longer and longer, which only further added to his despair, “I won't go back to prison 'cause I remember how my heart hurt, how hurt I was being locked up, I was treated bad,” he says, “even animals in the zoo are let out during the day,” he continues.
Leon believes that the solution to this issue is to employ staff who are empathetic of the difficulties that prisoners face, because he doesn't think the prison system is currently responding to these needs in an appropriate manner, “you need trained professionals in the prison system,” he says. New intake prison officers are coming straight into prison from college, without adequate training, Leon explains, “they don't know what prisoners need or what kind of people prisoners are, they're troubled people a lot of them,” he adds, himself an example.
There is certainly grounds for concern about the way mentally ill prisoners are treated, with suicides and self harm in prison reaching record highs – in the year preceding March 2017 there were 113 suicides in UK jails. This rate has more than doubled since 2013 according to the Prison Reform Trust, who also estimate that the percentage of prisoners dealing with mental health conditions such as depression is 15% higher than those in the general population.
For Leon, the memories of time spent in prison will always be hard to bear, “no one will understand until you've been to prison how difficult it is to be a prisoner,” he says, “you're treated like absolute shit, you're not treated like a human,” he continues. But, now that his life is more settled, he's focusing on his job and being an ambassador for prison reform, “I've changed my life, I just wanna help others do the same,” he says.
