Home News Anger after HMP Bristol prisoner handcuffed inside MRI scanner for cancer check-up

Anger after HMP Bristol prisoner handcuffed inside MRI scanner for cancer check-up

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The Ministry of Justice has defended the actions of officers who took a prisoner to a cancer check-up and handcuffed him – even inside an MRI scanner.

The prisoner, who had been receiving treatment for cancer, was taken from Horfield Prison to a hospital appointment which involved being placed in a full-body MRI scanner.

Despite being in a sealed scanning room with one door, and inside the scanner, the two prison officers put Toby Shone into plastic handcuffs after medical staff told them they would have to remove the metal handcuffs before he underwent the procedure.

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A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said that if a prisoner is deemed an escape risk, it was standard practice to place handcuffs.

The incident happened in late November, and Mr Shone has now written about the experience from his cell in a blog that has been published online.

The 43-year-old from Drybrook, in Gloucestershire, said the first set of zip-tight plastic cuffs he was bound by in the MRI scanner were so tight and painful they cut into his skin, and he had to ask for them to be removed for a second set.

Mr Shone wrote that there were discussions between the medical staff and the four prison officers who escorted him to the hospital. “They hadn’t realised that I couldn’t be shackled inside the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine,” he wrote.

“Despite the MRI machine being within a sealed room with a single door, I was forced to wear a pair of plastic zip tight cuffs which were tightened so tight they cut into my wrists,” he said, adding that they were cut off ‘with difficulty and pain…Due to my loud protests and demands for them to be removed’, but a second pair ‘almost no less tight’ were placed on his wrists.

“I was then bound like so inside the MRI, in considerable pain and discomfort and in no point in time did the medical staff ask if I was ok or raise any issue of me being treated like this while being told to ‘be calm’,” he added.

Shone wrote that one prison officer even remained inside the MRI scanning room, and the prison officer was given the ‘panic button’ normally given to the patients to tell medical staff they need to get out of the scanner.

“If you have ever been inside an MRI you will know that you are already confined inside an impossibly narrow tiny tube wrapped up in sensitive equipment whilst a torus of magnets whirls around you at deafening volume,” he said. “Hardly an easy place to escape from at the best of times.”

He said the prison officer being given the panic button and remaining inside the scanning room was ‘the final act’ that was ‘the most angering’, because the prison officers ‘are not even medical staff nor technicians, but merely lock and unlock doors, shout and abuse the imprisoned every day.

“I am not writing this as a ‘victim of oppression’ nor to ‘establish my rights’,” he said. “I write this to denounce the situation and to explain to others what to expect and especially for all the other prisoners who confront cancer,” he added.

Shone was jailed in October 2021 at Bristol Crown Court for three years and nine months after he admitted eight drugs charges – possessing LSD, magic mushrooms and the hallucinogen DMT with intent to supply, as well as the possession of DMT, ecstasy and cannabinoid THC.

Crown Prosecutors had initially charged Shone with four terrorism offences in February over allegations he was behind an anarchist website that included bomb-making instructions.



HMP Bristol in Horfield
HMP Bristol in Horfield

The Forest of Dean man was one of the only anarchists to be charged under modern terrorism laws. He had pleaded ‘not guilty’ to four terrorism charges had been due to stand trial in October, but the CPS offered no evidence so the charges were dropped.

In a blog after the terrorism case was dropped, Shone’s legal counsel Tayab Ali, a partner at law firm Bindman’s, said Shone has suffered from cancer, cancer-related depression and suspected PTSD, and had been using the cannabis, magic mushrooms and LSD as self-medication.

“He pleaded guilty on a reduced basis to eight psychedelic drug offences on the basis that he was using these drugs to treat his medical conditions. Any supply was to friends and visitors on a non-commercial basis,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said that if a prisoner is deemed an escape risk, it was standard practice to place handcuffs on them even inside an MRI scanner.

“Prisoners are risk assessed before hospital visits and restraints are used when deemed an escape risk,” he said.

“Standard procedures were followed and this prisoner was treated no differently to any other,” he added.

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