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.
