According to a coroner’s findings, a woman who traveled 60 miles to Wormwood Scrubs in an effort to stop her husband from taking his own life in prison could not inform the staff in time due to malfunctioning telephone lines and intercom systems.
Isaiah Adekunle Olugosi took his own life in his cell at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in March 2022, with a jury determining the cause of death to be suicide.
The report on preventing future deaths, authored by Richard Furniss, an assistant coroner for west London, revealed that Olugosi’s wife spoke to him around 9pm on March 27 and suspected he might harm himself. Despite her concerns, she, along with police from Cambridgeshire and the Metropolitan, were unable to reach the prison via phone to warn them, as the calls were directed to a number that was either unmonitored or outdated.
Consequently, she made the two-hour drive from Cambridge to Wormwood Scrubs, where she knocked on the main gate for an extended period, calling out for help and using a buzzer that was supposed to connect her to prison personnel. During the hearing, it was stated that the intercom was inoperative and had been for several years.
Due to this lack of communication, neither Olugosi’s wife nor the police could inform the prison throughout the night, leading to his tragic death. Furniss highlighted in his ruling that “there is a risk that future deaths will occur” unless the governor of Wormwood Scrubs, Amy Frost, implements corrective measures.
He expressed his concerns: “The intercom system was presumably installed to facilitate communication between the prison and the outside world. In this situation, a functional system could have allowed the deceased’s wife to alert the prison to the imminent threat to his life.”
Furniss found it perplexing that the intercom had remained nonfunctional for years, stating, “There was evidence indicating that it could not be repaired. However, the proposed alternatives seemed to be either leaving it as it is or removing it altogether. It is troubling that both the prison and the Ministry of Justice still regard it as unnecessary.”
Governor Frost has been requested to provide a response to Furniss’s report by April 21, detailing the measures that have been undertaken or are planned.
In a 2014 inspection, reports highlighted that budget cuts had degraded Wormwood Scrubs into a “filthy, overcrowded and dilapidated” state. Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons at that time, noted that the conditions had deteriorated in nearly every area.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice stated, “We will thoroughly review the coroner’s findings and respond to the report in due course.”
*If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. In the UK and Ireland, contact Samaritans at freephone 116 123, or via email at [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988, or by visiting 988lifeline.org for chat support. For those in Australia, Lifeline can be contacted at 13 11 14. Additional international helplines are available at befrienders.org.*
