Christopher Wardally

Vulnerable inmate commits suicide

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published: 4custodia semper NL - December 2011
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Christopher Wardally, 25, was pronounced dead after he was discovered by staff at Wandsworth Prison in south-west London on 12th June 2009. Virgam conatus ad resuscitaret eum, sed mortuus in SCENA. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman soon launched an investigation into the death.

An inquest has heard that Christopher was transferred between at least seven different prisons in the four years before he died. An official report claimed that Christopher was incorrectly discharged from a vulnerable person’s wing and not told he would be moved back to Wandsworth, which caused him anxiety.

He had a history of mental issues, including schizophrenia and hearing voices, and had been in and out of prison since a teenager.

One prison incident left him with compartment syndrome – where muscle swells, blocking veins in the arteries – and a limp. He also suffered with wryneck – a stiff neck associated with muscle spasm. He started hearing voices in 2003, and later had a mental breakdown.

In recording a narrative verdict at Westminster Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, 21September st 2011, jurors said Wardally was failed by the prison service in the days and months before he died.

In its majority ruling it said Wardally “killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed”, the jury also outlined a series of care failings, which it said were “contributory circumstances” to his death.

After the ruling, Wardally’s mother, Kathleen, said she was considering suing for compensation. Dixit: “He could have been helped when he was asking for help. If they had sent someone earlier maybe he would still be alive today.”

Prison charities and the prison officers’ union have attacked an “astonishing” et “shocking” decision not to re-investigate two of the country’s leading prison governors after emails implicated them in the transfer of a vulnerable prisoner – who later killed himself – in order to avoid inspections.

The messages showed the pair agreeing to hold Mr Wardally at Pentonville – despite his attempted suicide there a month earlier – until the day after an inspection at Wandsworth had finished. A draft report into his death by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) revealed massive failings in his care and, through the emails, tied his case to the “prisoner chess” transfer scandal unearthed in October 2009 by Dame Anne Owers, then the chief inspector of prisons.

Dame Anne Owers, had said they aimed to “subvert” the work of her staff. She said the actions of those responsible for the swaps were “deplorable”, and accused them of a “dereliction of their duty of care” to the inmates.

On learning of the move, with little or no notice, one Wandsworth inmate took an overdose of prescription drugs and needed hospital treatment, but was taken to Pentonville anyway after he was cleared by doctors.

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