“We’ve lost control here. We don’t control the prison — you f***ers do.”
That’s the response a former inmate at Bridgend’s HMP Parc claims he got from a prison officer after he voiced concerns over drugs, violence and corruption at the privately run jail. The former prisoner is one of many people to have come forward to WalesOnline with disturbing allegations about life at Parc. They include vicious drug debt retribution, some staff “turning a blind eye” to blatant dealing, and one exploited prisoner giving sexual favours in the showers in exchange for spice.
It is not only ex-inmates who have spoken to us about their experiences, but also former staff. They claim the “desperately understaffed” workforce fails to safeguard prisoners at Parc, where at least four of six recent sudden deaths are thought to be drug-related. One woman who recently worked at the jail told us: “The prison was ultimately run by the prisoners, with officers being paid to bring in contraband items. The enhanced red band prisoners, who were able to roam, would then ferry these items across the prison.” Rampant drug use, she claims, would go “unnoticed or ignored”.
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Parc is run by private security giant G4S, which has a history of controversy over its management of other prisons and young offender units. Responding to the crisis at Parc, a spokeswoman for the firm said it has “a comprehensive drugs strategy to reduce supply and demand in the prison” and that “the vast majority of our staff are hard-working and honest”. The Ministry of Justice, which is ultimately responsible for the prison, has refused to comment beyond saying that it won’t be stepping in. When we asked the MoJ if it had even raised concerns with G4S, its spokesman told us “it wouldn’t be fair on G4S” to answer that question.
‘You can make yourself a very wealthy man by being in prison’
Phil (not his real name) was imprisoned at Parc for 12 months up to April 2023. He was in his early 60s and it was the first time he had been in jail apart from a short spell at HMP Cardiff four decades earlier. His experience at Parc was, he says, “the shock of my life”.
Phil claims he had never seen so many illegal drugs in one place. The most popular was spice — a psychoactive substance which has been linked to the recent series of deaths — but Phil says it was also common to see Class As like heroin and cocaine, as well as unprescribed opioid medication like Subutex. “I witnessed drones come over to drop packages off but the vast majority of items were brought in by staff,” he said. “A bit of cardboard or paper soaked in liquid spice would sell for £50. They’d use an A4 sheet of paper from the classroom or from the officers. If you had 100 sheets on the wing, they’d be sold within an hour. One day at least 20 prisoners couldn’t speak or stand up. The prisoners running the supply were making more than £100k a year. You can make yourself a very wealthy man by being in prison.
“Tuesday was when a lot of the illegal drugs were brought on the wing. Friday was called ‘Black Eye Friday’ because people weren’t able to pay their debts for the drugs. A lot of men were assaulted, and I witnessed a lot of men locking themselves in their cell for fear of being attacked. Prisoners would go in the showers, where there were no cameras, to assault people. I’m not frightened of anything but I feared for my safety in there.”
“Skeletal” staffing meant the prison struggled to deal with violence among inmates, says Phil, who recalls a fight breaking out when only three officers — two of them female and one of those a new starter — were on duty in a wing with around 100 prisoners. He claims one brawl started with two well-built men “hitting ten bells out of each other”, and when the rookie female officer of slight build tried to stop it, she was herself assaulted.
One prisoner, a drug addict, was exploited by inmates who demanded oral sex in the showers in exchange for spice, says Phil. “There were some prisoners who were off their face on drugs in the night, then the next day they’d be taken for a urine test and it would come back clear. Everyone would be laughing, asking: ‘How was that clear? He couldn’t stand up.'”
Phil believes imprisonment in Parc is more likely to offer “an education in criminality” then rehabilitation. “I turned down offers from other prisoners to work for drug rings when I was released, to drive drugs to Liverpool and collect drug money. In Parc, people would make a line out of sheets and pass drugs between different floors. One day an officer saw what was going on and a prisoner said, ‘It’s alright guv, they’re just sending teabags.’ It was actually quite a large amount of spice. The officer turned a blind eye to it for a quiet life.” In response a G4S spokeswoman said: “We have a zero-tolerance policy towards drugs and completely reject claims that staff at the prison turn a blind eye to drugs and other illicit items.”
There were occasions, claims Phil — who takes 16 tablets a day for serious heart issues — when he did not receive his medication until a week after it was due. He says his life would have been at risk if he didn’t resort to buying the medication from fellow inmates. “Within 25 minutes of asking prisoners on the wing, I had every single one of the tablets in my hands. You’d either pay in vapes or put money in their account. I paid in vapes.
“Six times I had to purchase tablets from prisoners. When I couldn’t get them on time from the prison, I said to one of the officers, ‘I’ll have to go and purchase them on the wing now,’ and they said, ‘I know, that’s how Parc runs.’ The whole medical black market in there stems from the prison not giving you your tablets on time.” The Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board, which is responsible for medical care in the prison, responded that “we would encourage [a prisoner with concerns] to get in get in touch with our concerns team directly”.
Phil says delays to prescriptions for mental health issues had a serious impact on some prisoners, including one who allegedly set fire to his cell and became seriously ill from smoke inhalation. “You’ve got men going crazy because of [the delays], attacking officers and other prisoners,” Phil added. “So many people would threaten to jump off the handrail on the third floor and the staff would then send everyone into their cells and bring out a bouncy castle. I never saw anyone jump but quite a few would stand there threatening it.” A G4S spokeswoman said: “We do not recognise the picture painted by [Phil]. The health, safety and security of prisoners and staff is our number one priority.”
Families sick with worry
A Parc prisoner did jump from a height earlier this month, which as we previously reported led to the inmate being rushed to hospital. His partner later told us the prisoner had made an attempt on his life after struggling with mental health and “begging” for more support from staff. “I have been continually emailing, ringing, telling them to help him but have not even had one email answered,” said his partner. “He is luckily enough injured but not life-threatening.” The inmate is under a care plan to support people at risk of self-harm.
The wife of another inmate, a 41-year-old man with health issues including type two diabetes, told us he had a harrowing experience on April 1 while in his cell. He started vomiting blood and pressed his emergency buzzer at around 9pm but, his wife claims, a nurse did not come out until 11.30pm. We previously reported on the case of Parc prisoner Ross Appleby, who allegedly waited more than an hour for help after pressing his buzzer when he was stabbed.
In the incident on April 1, a nurse came to the cell but allegedly took no action beyond advising the prisoner to stop taking antibiotics he had been prescribed for a tooth infection. “After she left he was violently sick and collapsed on the floor,” claimed the prisoner’s wife. “He woke at 2am in the freezing cold and shouted for help. He thought he was going to die. When the nurse returned she said, ‘I didn’t know if you were putting it on to go to hospital, I thought something wasn’t right because your heartrate was high.'”
In the morning, the prisoner was taken to hospital and diagnosed with serious internal bleeding and abscesses. The doctor allegedly told the prisoner he should have been immediately taken to hospital after vomiting blood. A G4S spokeswoman said: “We responded promptly to [the prisoner’s] concerns and he was taken to hospital by ambulance.”
The inmate’s wife claims he recently went a week without his diabetes tablets until she complained to Parc. He has also allegedly gone months without access to a device he previously had in HMP Cardiff for checking his blood sugar levels. These worries have left his wife “so frightened” for his health. “I haven’t slept, I haven’t eaten, I can’t get any sense from anyone,” she said. The Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board responded that “we would encourage [the prisoner] and his family to get in touch with our concerns team directly”.
‘You could get more drugs in there than on the streets’
One woman, Kate (not her real name), spoke to us about her time working at Parc as an “interventions facilitator”, which according to G4S’ job description meant her role was to “lift people up and give them a chance to take control of their own lives”. But Kate claims this was impossible.
“The establishment was desperately understaffed for the two years I was there,” said Kate, who left in January. “The issue was not getting staff in, it was the retention. In terms of the officers on the wings, low staffing levels meant that there were too many objectives to complete with the manpower available. The training offered to officers is below par, and then they are put on a wing with little experience or support.”
Kate says prisoners spent much of their time in cells and their drug-taking was largely “ignored”, while some officers were allegedly paid to bring in illegal substances which would be carried across the jail by inmates who had trusted jobs like cleaning. “The lack of support was alarming for both prisoners and staff,” said Kate, adding that the prison had just one psychologist. G4S says prisoners can also access four trainee psychologists.
When Kate raised concerns with management over the quality of her team’s work, she alleges she was “shut down”. She added: “I believe the prison needs to be taken over by the Prison and Probation Service. It currently serves first and foremost as a business, and that’s all it will continue to be until something changes.” Parc’s spokeswoman responded: ““We do not agree with any of [Kate’s] allegations. We provided appropriate support during her employment and when concerns were raised we listened and considered them carefully. Her grievance was investigated and was found to be unsubstantiated.”
Sources tell us the prison’s problems are far from new. We spoke to a prisoner who served time at Parc in 2017 and alleged that staff would bring in muscle-building steroids for inmates. “As we had a mobile in our room, there were staff telling us when security was coming on the wing to spin [search] us. You could get more drugs in there than on the streets. It’s freely available over the wall, in the gym, staff even sorting it out. It was like a hotel when I was there. A free ride to do what we wanted.”
A former officer at Parc told us some of her colleagues would “turn a blind eye” to drugs being ferried around the prison because they “didn’t know what else to do”, adding: “As soon as officers go in there they are conditioned to think it’s the norm.” It was common for drugs to get in after an inmate had spent time in hospital or at a dental surgery, she claims. “The prisoner would go to the hospital and there would be drugs in the toilet for them to collect.”
She added that there was a high turnover of staff who felt they had “lost control”, which led to the jail relying on young staff who were more vulnerable to exploitation by inmates. Another former officer at the prison told us: “I left six years ago due to the corrupt way the prison is run and for my own safety. The prison is so short-staffed. You were very often left on the unit on your own with nearly 100 inmates out on the wing during exercise, and you had to supervise the unit, exercise yard and complete supervision on numerous inmates who were at risk of self-harm.”
An unfolding crisis
We have recently reported on a series of controversies at Parc including an inmate whose kidney cancer was allowed to spread for months despite the prison being told he needed an operation; staff allegedly pouring semen into meals of inmates they didn’t like; a prisoner who was found hanged after a prison officer failed to remove from his cell an item he used to take his own life; and a prisoner who was pronounced dead following an “unacceptable” 20-minute delay for an emergency response after he was found unresponsive having overdosed. We also recently reported on a Parc prisoner who died of a reported spice overdose months after being stabbed and robbed in his cell; and a pair of inmates who covered a CCTV camera then attacked a music teacher.
Parc is one of the biggest prisons in the UK. A study in June 2023 found the jail had 1,734 prisoners — significantly over its certified normal accommodation capacity of 1,559 inmates. And in a 2022 inspection some 49% of surveyed Parc prisoners said it was easy to get hold of illegal drugs there, compared with 32% in similar prisons. The inspector also wrote that self-harm levels were “high” among Parc prisoners.
South Wales Police is treating two of the six sudden inmate deaths between February 27 and March 19 as non-suspicious but believes the other four to be drug-related. Detective Steve Jones said last month: “At this stage we cannot confirm that the four deaths are connected to any specific drug. However, a fast-track process has been undertaken and identified the presence of nitazene-based substances in connection with all four deaths. Spice has been identified in two of the four deaths.”
Police arrested three people last month in connection with drugs smuggled into Parc. On March 21 a 40-year-old man from Birmingham and a 34-year-old woman from Penylan, Cardiff, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to supply controlled drugs and money laundering. Both have been released under investigation. A 34-year-old man, also from Penylan, was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of controlled drugs. He is on conditional bail pending further inquiries. It is understood this case is not linked to any investigation into deaths at Parc. Police say there is no update on the arrests since they were confirmed last month.
G4S has managed Parc since the prison opened in 1997. In 2019 the firm was stripped of its contract to run HMP Birmingham after the chief inspector of prisons said the jail had fallen into a “state of crisis” and was the worst he had come across. The report found prisoners used drink, drugs and violence with impunity. In 2016 the firm lost its contract for Kent’s Medway young offender institute after Panorama secretly filmed staff physically abusing children. There was another scandal for the contractor in 2021 when inspectors found some children at Oakhill in Milton Keynes had been locked in their rooms for up to 23 hours a day, and that youths were exposed to violence and excessive force.
What G4S says
A G4S spokeswoman said: “As with every other prison in the country, we work closely and effectively with the Police and the HMPPS [Prison and Probation Service] counter-corruption team to crack down on the small number [of staff] who may break the rules. HMP Parc’s senior team has carried out a number of recent searches. In accordance with standard protocol, the team requested and received support from other prisons.
“All mental health support is based on an assessment and operates in the same way as it would in the community. In line with national policy, prisoners at risk of self-harm or suicide are managed by a multi-disciplinary team and have a tailored support plan. We have a range of interventions in place for prisoners with less severe mental health issues.” She added that G4S’ drug strategy includes “robust security measures, working with the police, and engaging substance misuse service providers and health partners to support those in our care”.
If you would like to speak to WalesOnline about an issue at Parc prison, email us at conor.gogarty@walesonline.co.uk
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