A decade after I became the first black prison governor in the UK, why are there still so few of us?

The more the prison service becomes racially representative of the community they serve, the more they will gain the confidence of those communities, writes Babafemi Dada

The needs to be more diversity when it comes to the role of prison governors ( Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Looking back, when a family member in England expressed concern about my decision to join the prison service, I can now see why. I was 23 years old, I had spent most of my life in Nigeria and my accent stuck out like a sore thumb. In the UK, there are more black men behind bars than in front reforming them. But when I saw an advert for the prison service at a job centre, appealing for ethnic minorities to apply, I decided to answer the call.

Not long after, I landed an interview for an admin officer role at HMP Pentonville. While I didn’t get the job, a few month later I got a job at the same establishment as a prison officer and I remained there for seven years. I have worked in nine different prisons since my career in the prison service began almost 30 years ago, working my way up to deputy governor and then acting governor of HMP Young Offender Institution Drake Hall, becoming the first black prison governor in the country.

I’ve been able to touch people’s lives in a way few other jobs could. Ex-offenders can follow one of two paths when they leave prison. They can go on to live crime-free lives in the community or they can reoffend and find themselves locked up once again. My aim in this job is to make sure I can convince as many people as possible to choose the former. I genuinely believe prison can reform people – I’ve seen it myself.

Yet when I became an acting governor in 2011, many of the prisoners had never even seen a black manager before. It was therefore so important to me to be a role model not just to them but every Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) person that thinks they’re not good enough. I am proof we are.

Having the opportunity to speak to black prisoners helped me to appreciate their experiences and the preconceptions they might have had about prisons. Having someone in a position of power they could relate to meant I could work on reshaping any negative perceptions, I knew building the relationship between the two communities would take time and commitment and I had both.

The prison service continues to diversify the workforce by tailoring recruitment campaigns to focus on increasing BAME representation. Since 2016, we’ve recruited around 4,200 new prison officers and there’s a real desire to attract and retain high quality, passionate people, including those from wide-ranging backgrounds. However, the fact remains that more needs to be done to diversify our senior leaders.

The more the prison service becomes racially representative of the community they serve, the more they will gain the confidence of those communities. Black people grapple with a culture of not trusting the police, not seeing enough black police and prison officers and being told they are a sell-out if they consider joining the front-line. It’s no wonder there are still so few black people in these roles. Here lies the problem: the fewer black officers we have, the less likely there will be black people with senior leadership roles in the prison service.  

I acknowledge my own career path is unusual. But I was not prepared to let the fact that not enough black people were considering the prison service as a career destination hold me back. My ambition kept me going, even when I juggled doing evening classes to complete a Masters in Employment and Human Resources in 1993 while working as a prison officer.

I wasn’t going to let my stage 3 bowel cancer diagnosis in 2012 be a hurdle either when on the same week I received the appointment to be the governor of HM/YOI Werrington. This was what I had been working for since my arrival at Heathrow from Nigeria as a wide-eyed 23-year-old in 1991 and nothing would stop me. Luckily, I am as fit as a fiddle, having been given the all-clear.

I have the privilege of going to work and feeling excited about what I get to do. Some days I’m on the phone speaking to inmates’ families to assure them their loved one’s wellbeing is a priority for me. Other days I’m using accounting skills, working on a budget. This job is tough – for example I’ve moved a lot over the past few decades and I can’t thank my wife and children enough for being so understanding. But it’s also a job that pushes me to be a better person in every aspect of my life. I listen more, I care more and I’m more likely to think about how a problem can be solved as opposed to dwelling on the problem itself.

When I think about why there are still so few black prison governors after I became the first nearly a decade ago, I want to help in every way possible to change this. More black officers, more communicating with black people in the community and more people in positions of power publicly seeking black people to join the prison service will increase trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities. That’s the solution.

But it’s up to me and my colleagues to break down the barriers that clearly exist.

Babafemi Dada is governor of HMP Gartree