Being a prison officer is lonely. They have to patrol the wing by themselves at 3am, witness incidents their friends outside cannot comprehend, and protect a public that doesn’t much like them. When, at 22, Alex South began working as a prison officer in HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire, a men’s prison, an older male colleague, Parry, said to her: “I don’t think women should work in here.” This was the first of many times that South’s gender would enter the room before her.
When one prisoner wrote South a letter confessing his love for her and South didn’t reciprocate, he lied to the governor about having a sexual relationship with her in his cell. South argued her innocence while taunted by the image of officer Parry’s smug face.
Luckily, the governor believed South, and she continued working for more than a decade as a prison officer. But as well as contending with the men – in the cells and in her office – who wanted to see her fail, she had to reckon with her own doubts about the job.
At her second prison, Wormwood Scrubs, a prisoner on suicide watch told South that he hated himself for the pleasure he felt on seeing women afraid of him. But South was savvy to the convoluted psychology of sex offenders. She knew that he might be getting yet further gratification from sharing his shame with her and passed his case on to another officer. Later, when meeting a rapist for whom she felt prison was neither sufficiently punishing nor rehabilitating, she wondered if, in looking after him, she was “betraying the women he’s hurt”.
Alienated from her own morality, South is lonely, even by the standards of her profession. Behind These Doors reads like her attempt to alleviate that isolation by taking us inside a world we are reluctant to see, making it our problem too. Of all the great works of prison literature, few have been written by officers. Shane Bauer’s American Prison is the most reflective, though he wrote it as an undercover journalist. In the UK, Neil Samworth’s 2018 title Strangeways: A Prison Officer’s Story zooms in on all the most gruesome details.
For her part, South communicates psychological insights and doesn’t linger on violent scenes any more than is strictly necessary. She generally regards inmates as tragic figures rather than malevolent – young men caught up in poverty or mental illness, which makes it easy for them to make bad choices.
A few of the more manipulative and unrepentant men push South past her limit. She describes them as “vile”, says she felt glad that they were locked up with rats and cockroaches and that she would happily throw away the key. You might say these attitudes spoil the humanitarian mood of the book were they not themselves so human.
Memoirs written by inmates often include a reassuring dose of comic relief. By contrast, South comes across as a professional, committed to her duty. She offers sober exposition of rules, risk assessment and protocol. Perhaps prisoners need humour more than officers do. Inmates use irony to taunt their jailer. Laughing at the gallows is a substitute for redemption. Or perhaps South’s position required her to remain so vigilant that there was no time for funny business. As I went long stretches reading Behind These Doors without laughing, I wondered if it is in fact easier to hold on to your humanity as a prisoner than as a prison officer.
South explains how austerity cuts led to escalated violence and mental health problems on the wing; one week she cut three men down from ligatures. Haunted by nightmares, she isn’t sure how she will survive, emotionally. If she lets herself feel, the job will crucify her; if she withdraws, that will kill her in another way.
South looks for hope in political change. She meets an unnamed prison minister in Westminster and suggests that officers should get more training and annual mental health checkups. “That just sounds like fluffy stuff to make prison officers feel better,” says the minister. South sinks into a desperate silence for the rest of the meeting. Parliament turns out to be as lonely as the landing in prison.
That scene is a powerful reminder of how far we are from rehabilitating our jails. South was asking for help to survive the wing, not that it be knocked down and something more humane built in its place. She wasn’t trying to change the status quo, only to make it more bearable. It’s not prison cuts that are harmful but prisons themselves.
British jails are often as dysfunctional as their inmates. If you spend enough time in them, you can start feeling fatalistic. It would have taken courage for South to believe that a better world was possible, and to take that message to the bosses. She doesn’t add the sweeteners often included in prison narratives – such as a personal triumph over trauma or the shallow optimism that hope will set you free. Readers will need the courage to forgo consolation too. This book is a vivid, unsentimental insight into a world that needs to be seen.
Andy West is the author of The Life Inside (Picador)
• Behind These Doors: Stories of Strength, Suffering and Survival in Prison by Alex South is published by Hodder & Stoughton (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
