Ever wondered what’s behind the scenes at crown court? Harlow College is treated to a colourful tour of what you don’t see

“Anyone here been in trouble before?” asks the private security officer at Chelmsford Crown Court, Essex. A group of speechless students stare back at him in the disused visitors room of the court cellblock. “That’s the right answer,” he says. “By the end of the tour, you won’t want to either.”

He is a mountain of a man. Tattoos climb up his arms toward his immense shoulders. The girth of his neck means his top button cannot be done up and his collar lies open. A black, clip-on tie hangs askew off one side of his faded white shirt. The shirt struggles to support the waistline of this 19-stone man, while holding it all up is a silver belt buckle in the mould of a skull.

“I am going to swear during this tour,” he promises. “I’m going to keep this as real as possible. That means I will say the occasional f*ck word.” His gapped smile and gold earing give us no reason to doubt him as he turns and leads us to our first stop: the loading bay.

Prisoners attending trial and defendants without bail arrive here from police stations and prisons around the country. They are delivered by private security company, Serco, in vans made up of small cells “no bigger than a telephone box”.

With a lack of seatbelts as a precautionary measure against attempted suicide, the cells need to be small. The prison officer-come-guide explains: “When people see sheep all packed together in those trucks they say, ‘ah ain’t that cruel?’ No, it’s safe. That truck brakes and the sheep is a cloud.”

In the first of many demonstrations, he shows us how handcuffing himself to high risk prisoners during the transfer process keeps them in check. “Right me and you, we’re gonna get friendly. We’re gonna hold hands to simulate hand cuffs. If you cause any trouble, I grab the middle of your cuffs, thrust them back and then down to the floor.” It sounds easy. I hope he’s more nimble than he looks. “I’m 19 stone. I don’t run. I just sit down.” Job done.

Back to the vans. There are no toilets. Prisoners have a right to a rest break or, alternatively, they can choose to answer nature’s call there and then into a special receptacle. Our guide demonstrates the difficulties in doing this by using his hands to show the size of the hole. “I wouldn’t wanna try it.  Especially if I’d had a curry the night before.” The image is more harrowing than anything we’ll see today.

Our time in the loading bay is cut short as a vehicle pulls up outside the metal shutters. “Got a van coming in.” The doors start to rise, clattering, as we shuffle into the prisoners’ first port of call on entry to the court building – the sign in desk and deposit.

“It’s not a zoo,” he warns us, in preparation for the prisoner’s entry. “And he’s not Hannibal Lector. But you will have a look – it’s human nature”

As the van engine dies out, our guide does his impersonation of a prisoner for us. Right on cue is the colourful language he promised us at the start of the tour: “I’m not a f*cking exhibit. Get your hands off me you fat tw*t. What are you f*cking doing!?”

As we stand half behind the counter and half in the clothes deposit with the stereo blasting out power ballads from the local radio station, the first prisoner of the day passes with only a quick, inquiring glance. “Now we’ve all seen a prisoner,” he shrugs. “You get used to it. I did. Once I’d been spat at in the face a few times.”

We move towards the cells with a quick stop at the control room where details for the day’s prisoners are listed on a whiteboard. We stare into the room of around four or five staff busily attending to their mobile phones. We’re brought back down to earth by our ever-eager guide: “Now lets go and get jiggy with it down in the cells, shall we?”

His tour is littered with rhetorical questions, followed by brief pauses and snappy answers. “What would you be prepared to put up your bum?” he queries a cambridge graduate in the corridor outside the cells. “Nothing is the right answer. You thought about it though, didn’t you? I had a girl in here with a mobile phone up there once.” He turns to the boys. “And the charger.”

He chooses another student to demonstrate some search techniques. He has endless tales of drugs, chewing gum and other “contraband” being smuggled into the cells through every part of the body. Special care and attention is taken to locate any sharp objects, especially razors, which the prisoners use to self-harm. But for some of the “desperate people in desperate situations,” the lack of a sharp object is not enough to deter them. “Had a guy in here in a ‘suicide suit’,” he tells us. “Bit his own veins out of his arm.”

On our way to the kitchen our guide stops and explains a little bit about his employer, Serco. When prison security was privatised in 1992, the job was handed from the prison services over to a growing Serco. Unfortunately, the basic knowledge and skills of running the show were not transferred. He guide doesn’t blame the prison staff; they were gutted at losing their responsibilities. Still, “The prison service didn’t explain us nothing. F*ck all. In the first fortnight we lost 14 prisoners. We didn’t have a clue.”

Things have clearly changed inside Chelmsford Crown Court cellblock since then and harsh lessons have been learnt. Meanwhile, Serco has grown its public services portfolio to include education, transport, defence and even science. A writer in the Guardian called it, “probably the biggest company you’ve never heard of”. It currently holds a seven year prisoner escort and custody contract for London and East England worth around £420m. Despite their high profile though, it emerged in October that Serco had been using black cabs to transport 900 prisoners since the start of September amid “transitional problems” with IT systems.

We continue our tour and a quick look in the kitchen leaves us in the knowledge that the microwave meals on offer to the prisoners have a longer shelf life than the plastic spoons that our guide passes around. The spoons are unbreakably bendy so as not to be used as a weapon. They become brittle and potentially dangerous in one year and must be replaced. Some of the ready meals last a year and a half, un-refridgerated.

We quickly move on towards the interview rooms, where barristers liaise with their clients and prepare them for trial. The guide finds a minute to stop and reflect. He is philosophical about his role and clearly doesn’t want the point of this tour to escape us.

“This has been a ‘sugar coated’ look at our job down here,” he assures us. “Put it through your mind that you’re an officer down here and you’ve had a daughter who’s been raped and you’ve gotta deal with a rapist. We just have to switch it off. People say to me, how do you deal with paedophiles for example?” He breathes a heavy sigh and lifts his hands, palms up. “I don’t. I just do my job.”

He leaves us on that note as he directs the group into a small interview room. His mood has changed slightly. “It’s just a room,” he nods. “Until I walk in and tell you stories.”

His tales don’t disappoint. Weapons, violence and riot shields – these rooms have seen it all. In a favourite little story of his, he highlights the lack of communication between the barristers and the security officers. “Barrister comes down here and he tells a defendant in our custody, ‘your son’s just been shot.’ Of course the barristers don’t tell us this.” The rage that ensues takes an army of security to settle down. “Barristers – lots of brains, no common sense.”

The tour is drawing to a close and our guide is still reeling off his best lines. He sees us out of the defunct visitors room that we came in through. They don’t have the money to repair the window that has been kicked in by a prisoner. Looking at the Perspex screens and shaking his head, the situation disappoints him. “The world is not a nice place to live in,” he reflects.

But it’s all smiles as he holds the door open and we exit into the lobby. As I walk past his towering frame, I look into that crooked, smiling face and think back to something he said earlier. “Just cause I wear a white shirt, doesn’t mean I’m a nice person.”

The criminal justice system faces reforms which may see cameras in English courts for the first time since they were banned in 1925

Journalism student Louis Emanuel talks to law lecturer Ken Eaton about government plans to reform court reporting

RECENT government proposals to introduce cameras into courtrooms have been met by warnings from academics and lawyers.

The government hopes that relaxing broadcasting rules in the courts will lead to greater transparency and understanding in the criminal justice system. However, under the new proposals, critics fear that court proceedings could end up “putting pressure” on judges and defence counsels.

Under the current proposals, broadcasting court cases would tackle problems of “misunderstanding about how the criminal justice system works,” according to Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke.

However, broadcasting would be limited to the sentencing and would not extend to full trials.

This is a matter of concern for Ken Eaton, senior tutor in media law at Harlow College and the Anglia and Ruskin Journalism Centre. In an interview with the Harlow Harrier he explained: “If you’re only seeing sentencing, it might do the reverse as you don’t know the reason behind the sentencing.”

Eaton compared the effects of the proposals to only reading the headline. “My view is that if they’re only going to show that [the sentencing], well, we’re missing all the background to the case.”

He added that selective broadcasting could confuse instead of help demystify the criminal justice system.

“You might get a situation where people will not understand why a sentence has passed. And if they’re not prepared to delve into it or the press aren’t prepared to delve into it, that could put pressure on the judges.”

Kate Egan, a trainee at Booth Bennett Solicitors, shares Eaton’s concerns. As well as piling pressure on judges, she feels unnecessary pressure could be placed on the defence counsel too.

“One of the most frequent questions that criminal barristers get asked is ‘would you/how could you defend a rapist, pedophile or murderer?’ And although I believe really strongly in the answer (innocent until proven guilty, right to a fair trial cornerstone of democracy etc.) I would not want to be the person shown on TV every day standing up and defending Ian Huntley.”

As Egan explains, barristers work on a “cab rank” rule. Working in defense and prosecution, they do not always choose whom they represent.

“I can see barristers being vilified along with their clients,” adds Egan. She cites the example of Jeffrey Samuels QC, who was under obligation from his client’s defense to ask questions to Millie Dowler’s family this summer. The family found the questions “cruel and inhumane” – leading to Mrs Dowler collapsing after the trial finished. Alasdair Palmer in The Telegraph called Samuels’ work “legal but immoral”. Although he worked fully within the legal framework of his job, his actions were deemed ruthless – a characteristic the cameras may exaggerate or exploit, leading to further public pressure.

Nonetheless, The Bar Council, which represents barristers in England and Wales, supports the proposals - albeit with a “cautious welcome”. Chairman Peter Lodder QC explained in a press release last month: “Public trust in the criminal justice system may be enhanced by the broadcasting of sentencing remarks. All sentencing decisions are explained fully, but the full extent of the judge’s remarks is often unreported.”

However, decisions may be fully explained in theory but, by the time they reach our screens, judge’s remarks will be subject to a process of editing, argues Alice Gambell, a law student at Birkbeck Univesity of London. This presents another set of dangers.

“The way a defendant’s evidence in court is edited and broadcast may invite the public to draw an unwarranted conclusion as to the defendant’s guilt without a full understanding of the facts,” she says.

Public interpretations of court proceedings may add pressure to judges and barristers as broadcasters and individuals draw their own conclusions.

If the proposals go ahead, it could be the first time in 85 years that cameras have been allowed in court (except the supreme court). The  moves would overturn the ban on cameras in courts in England and Wales by the Criminal Justice Act 1925 and the Contempt of Court Act 1981, the former of which excluded cameras in the court rooms and within the precincts of the courthouse.

Opposition is strong from traditionalists who favour the old system and those who seek to protect the processes of the judiciary from a potentially damaging ‘Americanisation’.

Yet, with cameras already in place at appeals courts in Scotland and with The Bar Council and Kenneth Clarke throwing their weight behind the proposals, it seems they may eventually find their way into sentencing in England.

Judging from the reaction, there is every reason to be cautious about the potential changes. There are fears, though, that this is only the start. Reforms we are seeing develop now could be, as Ken Eaton puts it, “just the thin end of the wedge”.