Lichfield prison guard's 42 year stretch behind bars

Mar 20 2011 by Ben Goldby, Sunday Mercury

HE has spent the last 42 years behind bars.

But Steve Helden is no crook – he is one of Britain’s longest serving prison officers.

He has brushed shoulders with notorious inmates ranging from Charlie Bronson to ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser and Great Train Robber Buster Edwards.

Veteran Steve, 63, has also seen riots and had his family threatened by the IRA.

Now he plans to finally call time on his career when he hangs up his keys for good next year,

“It was 1969 when I came to work for the prison service. I’d just been made redundant and was looking for a steady job,” said the grandfather-of-three from Lichfield.

“I trained at Wakefield, and then got posted to Wormwood Scrubs.

“It’s hard to explain what that was like. You’re 21 years old, and you’re sent straight into a huge prison full of gangsters – including the Krays’ cronies and the Great Train Robbers. I was like a rabbit in the headlights.

“The well-known ones, the celebrity inmates, they ran the show. You see programmes like Porridge and you wonder how they got it so close to the truth, as you used to have a Harry Grout character running things!”

It took Steve a year to get used to his surroundings, and he remembers prison life being much more violent in the 70s than it is today.

“There was a lot of violence and a lot of intimidation. It was a very hard time to be a guard,” he said.

“I’m not a big guy, so the violence and threats were tough to deal with. I was involved in riots, big disturbances, but was never personally attacked, just got caught with the odd punch in a riot.

“Looking back I don’t know how we stuck it. There were no toilets in the cells, the inmates were still slopping out. You’d spend the first hour every day watching 200 men sorting their buckets out, and, occasionally, you’d get the contents of one thrown at you.