Two years after Helen Hewitt lost her position as governor, she has returned to England from America and now teaches Hostage and Siege procedures. Gordon Keller is experiencing problems at Barfield Prison. Morgan doesn't watch his back and he is taken hostage by a mentally ill prisoner, you says he will kill him if his demands are not met.

Maureen Collins brings in two actresses for a production of the Pirates of Penzance. A prisoner begins a relationship with one of the actresses and Maureen Collins is brutally raped by an inmate. Helen Hewitt returns to the prison to the public outcry the rape has caused.

A prisoner hatches a plot to escape and goes with his wife to the Lake District. Helen is told by the police that they have a tip off, and he is recaptured in Leeds. After breaking a chair over an officer's head, he gets a beating and is sent to the hospital wing. Helen begins an inquiry into whether one of her own officers beat him up.

Helen begins to look into the incident of the escaped prisoner. She interviews other prisoner and the prisoner is attacked. It is 'proven' that the officers attacked in self-defense, and the prisoner decides not to press charges - else his life in prison would be awful for the next eleven years. He meets Victor Braithwaite and asks him if he can be involved in whatever he is planning against the officers.

Victor Braithwaite carries out his plan and takes Officer Morgan hostage and holds him inside a cell at knife point. He makes demands and Helen tries to talk to him, but the prisoner inside the cell with him gets a kicking when he tries to release Morgan and Braithwaite refuses to allow either of them out of the cell.

Officer Morgan returns from his home-leave after the hostage situation. Helen leaves the prison on a training course and the prisoners plan their biggest escape attempt yet. A prisoner holds all the officers as everyone escapes and Marshall is shot down. Helen feels responsible for what has happened even though she wasn't there and feels she has failed in what she tried to accomplish at Barfield Prison.