This is The Guardian.

If you decide to cut staff, people die.

How Nottingham Prison descended into chaos.

When Denise Ierson's neighbour heard her son was going to prison, he issued a warning.

Just pray Ben isn't sent to Nottingham.

The neighbour's relative worked in prisons and he knew HMP Nottingham had a reputation for drugs,

violence and suicide.

This wasn't exactly classified information.

Since 2014 a series of alarming headlines had emerged.

A prison a bit off and it's believed swallowed and officers write earlobe.

An 80 year old prisoner was throttled to death with a sheet while watching Snooker in his cell.

Another man was asphyxuated on his second day in the prison.

His cell made stabs him with plastic cutlery, strangled him with a ligature made from shoelaces and put a plastic bag over his head.

According to Stephen Ramsel, a local criminal defense lawyer, conditions became so bad that some of his clients refused to board the bus that took them to the prison.

Nobody wanted to be in a prison, Ramsel said.

But more than anything, nobody wanted to be in Nottingham prison.

On the 16th of October 2018, Ben Iason, a slender 31 year old with a history of anxiety, arrived at Nottingham to await sentencing for a domestic violence charge.

On the 22nd of October, Ben informed a staff member that he was under threat from other prisoners and that his cell had been robbed three times.

T-bags, biscuits and his crucifix were missing.

That evening he told his mother he'd attempted suicide and that he intended to try again.

Denise yelled at him to hold out. At the time she was caring for her grandson who had brain cancer. She spent evenings alone in her flat worrying that Ben wouldn't survive either.

In the early hours of the 13th of December, an officer passed Ben's cell and noticed that the observation hatch was covered with toilet roll.

...