One former prisoner has claimed the privately-run HMP Parc is the jail of choice for criminals as 'every drug you can buy outside, you can buy in HMP Parc'.
A spotlight has been shone on a scandal-hit prison where six inmates have died suddenly in recent weeks. At least four of the deaths reported at HMP Parc in Bridgend, Wales, are being treated as drug-related, authorities have confirmed.
The last month has been abnormal because there have been so many deaths in a short space of time. Last year a former officer at the prison, Ruth Shmylo, claimed her colleagues would spit or pour semen into the meals of inmates they didn't like. It also had a "zero-tolerance approach to staff corruption" and worked with police to root this out. One man who spent a year imprisoned at Parc in 2018 told us it was the worst time of his life. The former inmate, who we are calling Tom, has since become a substance misuse worker.
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Tom considers himself lucky. He says a Parc prisoner took his own life because of threats from dealer inmates after falling into drug debt. Another inmate, Tom added, had been doing well at HMP Cardiff. "Then he went into Parc and within a year he hanged himself after getting out of hand with heroin."
On the evening of November 18, an officer found Mr Jones sitting upright on his bed. The report said there was "an unacceptable delay of nearly 20 minutes" before an emergency code was called, even though Mr Jones was under self-harm monitoring at the time. There was "a further unacceptable delay" in staff bringing a defibrillator to the cell.
In the following months Mr Blanchard complained he was in pain, and in March 2022 he learned the cancer had spread to his liver and pancreas, which claimed his life three months later. The report said the delay may have contributed to the cancer's spread. "Housing options also provide places in hostels and Mr Uddin was reluctant to go to the Huggard Centre — a hostel for people who are homeless — or Tresillian but told the probation officer that he would go. The probation officer told Mr Uddin that if he did not engage with housing options, he could be recalled to prison."
Ms Harding says her son struggled when he entered Parc as he allegedly had to wait months for his epilepsy medication. She does not believe illegal drugs were involved in his death because he had "always been against them" but she does not "know what to believe anymore". 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.
Six inmates have died suddenly at Bridgend's HMP Parc since late February. South Wales Police is treating two of the six deaths between February 27 and March 19 as non-suspicious but believes the other four to be drug-related. Detective Steve Jones said last week: “At this stage we cannot confirm that the four deaths are connected to any specific drug.
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