Quaker chaplain banned from prisons for five years
‘Three weeks before all this started, another Quaker-led charity – Best – had been asked to leave, again for reasons that were difficult to follow.’
A Quaker prison chaplain was banned last month from working at any prison for five years.
Liz Bridge, former Quaker chaplain at Wandsworth Prison, was told to leave after lending small amounts of money without telling prison management to men who were being released. The sums were between £15 to £30. ‘These were men who were going to leave homeless and were very very frightened about how they would cope,’ she told Channel 4 News. One had attempted to hang himself; another was ‘a very, very serious self-harmer’.
‘I was told that I had put the prison at risk,’ said Liz Bridge. A letter from the Prison Service said that the exclusion reflected a very serious breach of professional standards. She had not formally declared her financial relationship with prisoners, compromising security, it said.
The report also featured a mother of one inmate who described the prison as ‘not fit for an animal, let alone a human’. She said her son’s decline had been noticeable since living there. ‘I’m not asking for five-star special treatment but it’s not liveable,’ she said. ‘It’s inhumane.’
The news item followed another damning report into the state of British prisons, this time focusing on Bedford Prison.
Liz Bridge told the Friend that she had been sorting socks from the Christmas appeal when she was told to go to Security, where ‘the bombshell’ dropped. ‘Three weeks before all this started, another Quaker-led charity – Best – had been asked to leave, again for reasons that were difficult to follow.’
She said she had recently been giving talks to raise funds for a charity she set up last December, which has £27,000 in funds for the prison, currently unused.
A Prison Service spokesperson told the Friend: ‘We rightly expect all Prison Service staff to work to the highest-level of standards and will not hesitate to take quick action against those who put themselves or other staff at risk.’
Liz Bridge was awarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours 2022 list.
The Friend has also approached Wandsworth Prison for comment.
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