Prison staff in England are increasingly missing work due to poor mental health, exclusive data shows. Officers say a lack of support, regular traumatic incidents and violence are factors behind the rise.
“In my final weeks, it was very common to come in and see one of your colleagues’ names crossed off the rota because they had got to a point where working one more minute at the prison was just mentally impossible.”
Until last month, Sophie, 22, was a prison officer at HMP Guys Marsh in Dorset. It was a job she had once “loved”.
“When you saw the prisoners making progress, it was just incredible,” she said. “But I had to leave because the prison never supported staff through the hard times.”
While working at Guys Marsh, Sophie needed hospital psychiatric care. She said her job had been the principal factor in the decline in her mental health.
“Dealing with constant and disgusting levels of self-harm and assaults with no real support meant I just couldn’t do it anymore,” she said. “I begged for help but got nothing.”
A Ministry for Justice spokesperson said the government had “inherited a prison system in crisis”.
They added the government was tackling “unacceptable” levels of violence, self-harm and assaults through additional prison places and sentencing reforms “so our jails create better citizens, not better criminals”.
England’s prisons lost almost 150,000 working days because of mental ill-health last year, up 44% since 2019.
Guys Marsh, where Sophie worked, had the highest proportion of prison officers taking at least one day off for mental health reasons last year.