Protesters in prison for environmental direct action are sounding the alarm on the medical negligence faced by incarcerated people across the UK.

Activists serving sentences or on remand in relation to action taken with Just Stop Oil spoke to Novara Media about their experiences of the dire state of prison healthcare, which for one protester had potentially life-threatening consequences. 

In September, Chris Bennett, a 33-year-old support worker, was jailed at HMP Peterborough after occupying tunnels dug under a road leading to an oil terminal in Essex in 2022. 

Within his first few weeks in prison, Bennett noticed what he thought was an infection in his right leg. He recalls reporting it on 4 October, but in the days that followed, he struggled to have it taken seriously, going to one health appointment only to be told that it was actually supposed to be on a different day, and not being picked up for another altogether.

On 10 October, Bennett received a visit in prison from Sally Webber, a friend who happens to be a retired GP. Webber looked at his leg and said she thought he could have deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) – a potentially life-threatening condition if left untreated – and that he needed to go to A&E. Bennett tried again to be seen by a doctor later that day, but failed.

On 11 October, Bennett’s friends and supporters outside prison took action. They put out a call amongst activist circles for people to ring the prison and insist he be seen by a doctor. Over 100 calls were made, and within hours, a doctor was at his cell.

The doctor said he didn’t think that Bennett had DVT, but would arrange for blood tests as a precaution and would see that he received antibiotics. When the tests eventually came back, they showed high markers for DVT. On 16 October, more than 10 days after he had first tried to sound the alarm, Bennett was finally taken to hospital, where it was confirmed he had the condition. Even after being diagnosed, once back in prison, staff failed to collect Bennett to receive his evening medication on 18, 19 and 20 October.

Speaking to Novara Media, Webber said: “[Bennett] absolutely should not have been left with a potentially life-threatening, well-recognised condition for a week or 10 days without seeing a doctor.”

Bennett, now out of prison on early release, said that despite his ordeal, he felt luckier than most people in prison who need urgent healthcare.

“If it hadn’t been for the fact I had people outside prison willing to make loads of phone calls to the prison and make a nuisance of themselves, I wouldn’t have been seen as early as I was,” he said. “There are tons of people in prison who don’t have that support […] and are a lot more vulnerable.”

Elsewhere, issues with medication access left one climate protester in a state she described to Novara Media as “dehumanising”. 

Rosa Hicks, 29, is currently on remand at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey after being charged with conspiring to disrupt Heathrow airport in July. As first reported by Private Eye, Hicks, who has a chronic shoulder injury, had only irregular access to essential pain medication when first imprisoned. Her pain was so bad that she wasn’t able to get into her bunk, and had to sleep on the floor of her cell. At one point she was even unable to use the toilet, and had to ask for incontinence pads. 

“When I was sleeping on the floor, it did feel incredibly dehumanising,” Hicks told Novara Media. “I had people on my wing say, ‘They wouldn’t treat an animal like this, I can’t believe that they’re treating a human like this’.”

Britain’s prisons are in a profound state of crisis. With the prison population in England and Wales doubling over the last 30 years, many institutions face severe overcrowding, as well as staffing shortages and inadequate resourcing.  

Like Bennett, Hicks said that healthcare issues were “affecting so many people” in prison, “arguably in more serious ways” than she had suffered. Prisoners have reliably been found to have poorer health outcomes than those not incarcerated, with a recent review showing that prisoners in the UK die from natural causes 20 years earlier than the general population.

In recent years, healthcare failings at HMP Peterborough and HMP Bronzefield – both run by private company Sodexo – have led to deaths in custody. 

In 2016, 39-year-old Natasha Chin died at HMP Bronzefield after vomiting for nine hours. An inquest ruled that her death was caused by neglect and a lack of basic healthcare, including the failure of healthcare staff to respond to prison officers’ requests to attend to her. Sodexo acknowledged that “mistakes were made”, and insisted its systems were now more robust.

In 2017, 45-year-old Annabella Landsberg, who was diabetic, died at HMP Peterborough. An inquest found failings on the part of the prison, healthcare staff, custody officers and GPs all contributed to her death, including the absence of diabetic care that is readily available from local health services. Damian Evans, then the director at HMP Peterborough, said the prison was “very sorry” for Landsberg’s treatment, that it had reviewed the delivery of its healthcare services and that changes had been made.

Deborah Coles is the executive director of Inquest, a charity working with families bereaved by state-related deaths.

“Inquest’s casework has repeatedly highlighted a systemic culture of disbelief, dismissal and inaction in prison healthcare which allows for prisoners’ ill health to worsen to the point of no return, and at the sharpest end, death,” Coles told Novara Media.

“The treatment of climate protesters’ health is just part of a litany of incidents that underscore the severely inadequate state of healthcare in prison,” she added – noting that whilst activists often have a voice, so many others in prison do not.

When approached by Novara Media for comment, the Ministry of Justice referred us to prison contractor Sodexo. A Sodexo spokesperson said the company wasn’t able to comment on individual cases.