Report of the Inquiry into the circumstances of the Death of Bernard ...

Was the decision to search legitimate?
19.11 The inquiry heard evidence about the difference between targeted and routine
searching. The inquiry understands the search to have been part of the routine
searching regime, which is a necessary part of wing security. All cells on G wing having
been searched in the cycle, any cell search that evening would be an ‘excess’ search.
19.12 Officers Downs and Bowcock told the inquiry that SO Nuttall authorised the
search and that they told him whose cell they were going to search. SO Nuttall recalled
only that the officers said they were going to do a search.
19.13 The cell or prisoner may or may not have been identified but there is no
disagreement that the officers were detailed to search that evening and were trusted
with discretion as to which cell to search. But searching is a pinch point in prisons.
Prisoners understandably dislike it. It involves strangers rifling through one’s personal
possessions and includes a strip search, which will always be humiliating no matter how
sensitively conducted. Searching is a necessary evil but, in my experience, it is part of
prisoner folklore that cell searches can be used punitively, to keep selected prisoners in
line. It is part of good management to guard against that happening, or seeming to
happen.
19.14 For routine searching, the usual practice is to search both prisoners in a two-man
cell. We were told that in 1998 it was not uncommon to search cells when prisoners were
not there. The officers decided to search G3-24 because Sonny Lodge had come to their
attention and he was conveniently available. Little if any effort was made to locate Mr
Gray and his name was not entered on the searching sheet. There is little doubt that the
search was personally directed at Sonny Lodge.
19.15 Was there a link between the search and the altercation in the afternoon? There
undoubtedly was. The inquiry accepts Officer Downs’ evidence that he and Officer
Bowcock would probably not have alighted on Sonny Lodge’s cell if Officer Downs had
not been writing in his record at the time. But was it intended as additional punishment,
to teach Sonny Lodge to keep his nose clean, or as a provocation, “a wind-up”? Both
officers vehemently denied it. Of the altercation between Sonny and Officer Downs in the
afternoon, SO Nuttall commented:
“On a scale of 1 to 10 in the prison, that was fairly much a 1…. prisoners do tend to
speak the language of the streets and vent their frustrations rather quickly and quite
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