Welsh-speaking prisoners at Wales’ largest prison have been told to stop speaking Welsh, according to former inmates. HMP Berwyn in Wrexham holds the largest number of Welsh-speaking prisoners of  all of Wales’ prisons, with 84 inmates registered as Welsh speakers in 2024, according to Ministry  of Justice figures. As such, former inmates at HMP Berwyn thought the prison would dem onstrate respect for Welsh language rights and accommodate towards inmates’ language needs. Yet, inmates report being punished for speaking Welsh and being forced to speak in English, with prison staff displaying an alleged hostility towards the language.  

The findings emerged from a report written by Robert Jones of Cardiff University and Gregory Davis from the University of Liverpool, titled  “Rights, Pains and Illusions: The Experiences of  Welsh-Speakers at Wales’ ‘Flagship’ Prison”. In this report, the researchers claim that the Welsh  language at Berwyn was not treated with the  same respect or equality as the English language. They also conducted several interviews with Welsh-speaking former inmates who had served  at Berwyn between 2018 and 2022. In these interviews, they found a consistent theme of the Welsh language being policed by staff at Berwyn.

In response to this report, a spokesperson for  the prison said “there are occasions when prisoner communications are restricted to English  for security reasons”. Prisoners in Wales have a  right to speak in Welsh. The Welsh Language Act  of 1993 gave the Welsh language equal status to  English in public business and the administration of justice. According to its Welsh language scheme, HM Prison and Probation Service is  committed to “promoting the rights of Welsh speaking prisoners”.  

Yet, several individuals report being confronted by prison staff whilst speaking Welsh with fellow prisoners in communal spaces and prison corridors. In some cases, staff had interrupted prisoners’ conversations, asking them to  explain what they were saying. In other cases, staff explicitly instructed prisoners to switch to English. According to former inmate Gwilym, incidents such as these happened on a “daily  basis”. Several other inmates also remarked that they had experienced a greater acceptance of the Welsh language in English prisons.  

One former inmate interviewed by Jones and Davis, Ieuan, revealed that an officer banned him from speaking Welsh during a private meeting with his solicitor and threatened to use force if he didn’t switch to English. “I was on videolink with my solicitor, and I was speaking Welsh with him, and the officer come in and told me to stop speaking Welsh, or else I’d get done for it. I’d get a nicking for it”, Ieuan told the researchers. “And I was, like, shocked, and even my solicitor was… So, obviously, we had to speak English then”.  “Berwyn is meant to be a Welsh-speaking jail”,  Ieuan also said, “And it’s far from that. It’s 100% not a Welsh-speaking jail”. 

Welsh-speaking prisoners also experienced significant delays in sending and receiving letters written in Welsh. Former inmate Hefin told the researchers “[My] pad mate, he sent a letter [in  English], and it arrived within two, three days.  My letter [in Welsh] takes two weeks, three weeks, and if not [it will] go missing. It was  pathetic. I stopped writing letters in the end”.  

The Welsh Language Commissioner, Efa Gruffudd Jones has told BBC Wales in a recent article that the findings from this report “causes concern”, suggesting that “the basic rights of  Welsh speakers are not considered sufficiently”.  She also said that she agrees with demands from  the two researchers that “linguistic rights [of  inmates] are fully respected”. Ms Gruffudd Jones is scheduled to meet with the prison management  team at Berwyn, which she hopes will be an “opportunity to discuss these matters and ensure that  there is significant improvement in the provision  [of Welsh language needs] in the future”.