A prison officer has been jailed after he punched a prisoner so hard that he broke his own hand.
The inmate was sitting alone in his cell when prison officer Jack Kerrison repeatedly hit him with both fists, leaving a nasty wound that needed hospital treatment. He stormed into the cell and accused the prisoner of being a "cheeky little c***" before the unprovoked attack.
Hull Crown Court was told Kerrison later tried to "concoct" a pack of lies and recruit other prison officers into covering up for him. The 27-year-old admitted assaulting the prisoner, causing actual bodily harm, on June 16 last year.
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A charge of perverting the course of justice was dropped but the details of it formed part of the case, Hull Live reports.
Charlotte Baines, prosecuting, said Kerrison was working at the time as a prison officer at Hull Prison and the prisoner was sharing a double cell with another inmate. Both had enhanced status because of their good behaviour while in prison and the inmate who was assaulted was a "care buddy" who helped elderly or disabled prisoners by taking them to appointments or fetching their meals.
There was an incident involving other officers restraining a prisoner on the floor and other inmates were given an "all away" signal to return to their cells. Kerrison shouted to one prisoner to get into his cell, which the man was already doing.
The inmate sat on a plastic chair near a table. Kerrison was angry and aggressive and told him: "If you've got a f***ing problem with that, we can go to the room" - a reference to another room on the other side of the landing.
The prisoner said he did not have a problem and he thought that this would be the end of it. However, Miss Baines said Kerrison "stormed" into his cell and punched the man up to ten times.
The man's cellmate heard Kerrison say "cheeky little c***" to the man when he stormed into the cell. The prisoner did not do anything and curled up. The cellmate did not stop Kerrison, who looked, shortly before the assault, like he had been "puffing himself up" to make himself bigger.
The victim was left dizzy and realised that his head was bleeding, with blood dripping on the cell floor. The other prisoner put a towel on his head to try to stop the flow of blood and pressed the emergency button for help. Staff and a nurse attended to treat the head injury and the prisoner was taken to hospital, suffering a laceration on the top of his head.
Kerrison was seen shaking his hand as if it hurt and was found to have fractured a bone. He went to hospital and needed treatment.
He later told colleagues: "We need to come up with a story and stick to it. If you stick to the story, I'll owe you." He "concocted a story" that he had trapped his hand in a gate when he was responding to an alarm. Kerrison denied assaulting the prisoner and denied any knowledge of how the bleeding had happened. He lied to two senior officers.
He later telephoned another prison officer, saying that he needed to stick to the story, and later contacted him on Facebook, even though he had not been a friend on Facebook before. He said: "Just to let you know, mate, I have been suspended. If you stick to what I said, I'll be fine, mate. If you say that, I'm safe, mate, and I'll owe you big time."
Kerrison continued to give a false story during interview and denied any physical contact with the prisoner. The victim had been left shaken and shocked.
Ismael Uddin, mitigating, said Kerrison suffered a momentary loss of control, adding: "He was in a position of trust and he let someone down badly. It was a loss of control due to a conversation he had."
He had lied because he was a "rabbit in the headlight", said Mr Uddin. Kerrison claimed that he had been accepted into the Royal Marines, even though the Army supposedly knew about the conviction. This was treated with scepticism by the court, however.
Kerrison had no previous convictions. He had said: "I am someone who is supposed to keep them safe. I have abused my position of trust."
Recorder Gurdial Singh told Kerrison: "You had the care and custody control of inmates. You were expected to protect and look after them and deal with them in accordance with your role. You set about the complainant, sitting defenceless, and punched him on the head.
Kerrison did everything he could to avoid responsibility for his "cowardly behaviour" and the fact that he fractured his own hand showed the level of force used. Recorder Singh added: "We simply can't have, with impunity, prison officers attacking inmates".
The sentence imposed needed to be both a "punishment and a deterrent" and he would be "failing in my public duty" if he did not send Kerrison to prison. Kerrison was jailed for 18 months.
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