THE JAIL BIRDS

At HMP Guys Marsh in rural Dorset, 20 rehomed ex-commercial hens are helping some of the prison’s most challenging men envisage a different kind of future.

It sounds so unlikely on paper. Prisoners are given hens to look after. Maintaining their runs, collecting and packing their eggs, feeding them, learning poultry husbandry through a special BHWT course. Does it work? Yes, says prison officer Wayne Walters. “Normally they’d struggle to keep a job down, wouldn’t pay attention, would muck about. But with the chickens, somehow, it’s different. Honestly, it calms them down.” One long-term prisoner, routinely placed in segregation for violence, was offered a chance to work with Wayne and the hens. He never missed a shift. “Those chickens were like his children,” says Wayne, who is now an enthusiastic advocate of the scheme after seeing the difference it made. Another prison officer, Paul, was sceptical at first. Now he says he would “encourage every prison in the UK to have hens.” The best bit? “Every single prisoner who has worked with me on this project says they’re going to get their own hens as soon as they get out,” adds Wayne. “They ask me loads of questions, like how many they should get, or whether they should get a cockerel. “Whether they actually do or not, I don’t know. But still, they’re actually talking about it. Lifers, imagining a future beyond this place.”