It was a hot day in Texas when I visited in 2018. Hotter still inside the walls of the Eastham Unit, the men’s prison near Huntsville where I spent a few hours. My hands were sweaty enough as it was, as I focused my attention on the target board in front of me and practised firing rounds from a small silver pistol.

The men and women with me were wardens at the Eastham Unit. “I wouldn’t do this job without a gun for no amount of money,” said one. These were experienced correctional officers who knew the Texas prison system well. And they were baffled that, as an English prison officer, I didn’t carry a gun. But I felt differently. There were plenty of things that I would have changed about our prison system, but introducing weapons wasn’t one of them.

After an attack on three guards at HMP Frankland, which left two of them seriously injured, the Prison Officers Association (POA) is demanding that prison staff be equipped with electric stun guns. Instinctively, I object to this. To me, the suggestion seems at odds with what the UK is supposed to want from our prisons: the rehabilitation of the men and women inside. We want them to be released as better citizens, neighbours, colleagues. It’s hard to imagine how the use of stun guns would help to achieve that.

I have spent a considerable chunk of my life in prisons; in high-security establishments,

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