The speaker at our meeting on the 8th January is Karen Castle who will give a talk entitled “How I Ended Up in Prison”.
Karen began her career by training as a nurse in Cheshire and working in various wards in the NHS. Following a tough recruitment and selection process in the 1980’s, including numerous challenging psychometric, physical and mental tests, she was appointed as a Hospital Prison Officer, one of the first women ever to hold this title and then to work in a male prison. Her role as a Hospital Officer included suicide prevention, hostage negotiation, mental and emotional health and wellbeing support, and all physical health support. She later worked in further education before returning to nursing.
Karen’s recruitment by the Home Office was an experiment. It was thought that by training female nurses to become prison officers and then placing them in the toughest of male prisons the aggression and violence in the prisons might be lessened. She will tell us how it all played out.
Anyone wishing to come along to the meeting as a guest can contact the club through the Contact Page of this web site, or if preferred they can ring 07717 375505 to speak to a current member.