Speech to the Prison Governors’ Association conference

Please note that this speech has not been checked against delivery so some small differences are possible.

Thank you very much for having me to your conference, it’s a great pleasure to be invited back. I plan to speak for about 25 minutes or so, leaving plenty of time for what are always challenging and interesting questions.

There is no doubt that these are difficult times for prisons. Overcrowding and the acute lack of space across the estate, which for many years my predecessors and I have repeatedly voiced concerns to Ministers, reached a tipping point over the Summer. Heightened public, parliamentary and media attention on the state of our prisons followed and has been, I believe, welcome. For too long prisons and probation have not had the attention they deserve.

However, schemes to manage the prison population such as ECSL under the previous government, and the more recent SDS40, while necessary, have understandably worried the public. Many will have been surprised for example, to learn that some prisoners are typically released after serving 50% of their sentence, let alone 40%. Significant media interest means that any reported incidents of re-offending, or heaven forbid, a serious further offence, will be front page news. However necessary these schemes may be, they place significant additional pressures on you, your teams, probation, and other organisations. Our inspectors have seen first-hand the enormous work done in prisons to complete sentence calculations and pre-release work. It has been, and continues to be, a particularly busy period.

HMI Prisons and the role of the Inspectorate

I am aware that for some of you, your year will have been made busier by a visit from us. Between April 2023 and March 2024, we published full inspections of 36 men’s prisons and 3 holding women. We also did Independent Reviews of Progress (IRPs) at 16 jails and 4 full inspections of YOIs. We saw some really excellent establishments including open prisons like Askham Grange, East Sutton Park and Thorn Cross, as well as closed establishments making impressive strides, for example Preston, Moorland, Swansea and Huntercombe. But we also inspected places where we had significant concerns. I issued 4 Urgent Notifications in 2023-24, three in adult jails and one in the youth estate.

2024-25 continues to be a busy programme, again with mixed findings. We have visited some impressive jails including Hollesley Bay, Drake Hall, Oakwood, Rye Hill, Hatfield, Kirklevington Grange and Hydebank Wood over in Northern Ireland. While recent IRPs of Bristol, Bedford and Woodhill, all previously subjected to urgent notifications, have also been encouraging. Congratulations to Vanessa Prendergast, Sarah Bott and Nikki Marfleet for the work they are doing in turning round those notoriously difficult prisons. But it also worries me greatly that I have already had to issue Urgent Notifications at two more jails.

Inspections – and Urgent Notifications in particular – are enormously stressful for those involved. I and the entire team at HMIP recognise this. I have been a headteacher and I know what it feels like to be waiting for that phone call. I had a spreadsheet of all the special schools in London and would check off when each one got inspected, trying to predict when Ofsted were going to show up at our place.

There is often a mystique about how we schedule inspections, but it is actually quite simple. Less risky jails, such as open prisons or those holding people convicted of sexual offences can expect a visit every 4 to 5 years, while in riskier prisons we are likely to arrive every 2 or 3 years. We also have several risk slots into which we can bump prisons up, based on factors such as deteriorating performance data, intelligence, correspondence or a change of leadership.

You will not be surprised to know that it remains my firm belief that independent inspection is essential for any public service, and even more so for institutions that exist outside the public’s view. It is simply too easy for prisons, and the people living and working in them, to be out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Organisations like HMIP, which are independent of both the government of the day and the service, are an essential part of the criminal justice landscape.

Our focus is unapologetically on outcomes. On inspection, we draw on a range of evidence to make our judgements. These include observation, the prisoner perspective, staff reflections, relevant third-party views and considerable documentary evidence and data. Of course, the inspectorate and those in the service will not always see eye to eye, nor would I expect, or want us to. But our independent perspective, rooted not in politics or process, but in outcomes, is vital to ongoing efforts to improve the standards of treatment and conditions in prisons across England and Wales.

When I talk to my fellow chief inspectors in other jurisdictions, I realise how lucky we are – that, as a result of the intransigence of my predecessors and also the support for inspection that we get from the prison service – we don’t get the sort of political interference that occurs elsewhere. Our independence is our great strength, although it is important that, as we make criticism, we are also willing to take it. It is why I appreciate the relationship we have with the PGA and the vigour and candour that Tom and Mark have brought to the role.

Areas of concern

I want to talk about three areas in particular which I feel demand attention from governors, HMPPS and ministers. The first is violence and illicit drugs.

Violence and illicit drugs

Robust security and order are essential to the running of prisons. Without these, more meaningful rehabilitative work simply cannot take place. As one of my team neatly summarised in a recent IRP, the influx of drugs “clearly limited the degree of progress made in almost all the concerns we reviewed at this visit.”

At Hindley, in the six months before our IRP the MDT rate was 59% compared with the already shocking 55% over the same period before the original inspection. In April, the positive test rate peaked at 77%. These are astonishingly high figures. And this is despite the unrelenting focus and determination by Natalie McKee and her team, that we recognised both in the inspection and IRP. A look at our recently published inspection reports makes for grim reading. At Swaleside the MDT rate was around 32% over the last year, peaking at over 56% in June. At Brixton, in our survey 42% of prisoners said it was easy to get illicit drugs and random testing showed a positive rate of 28%. At Rochester the positive rate was 42%. And at Erlestoke in our survey, 60% of prisoners said that it was easy to get hold of drugs. I could go on, but the challenge is clear and cannot be solved by you as individual governors. Ministers and the prison service will need to invest in better gate security, improved windows and technology to keep drones away from our prisons.

Supply typically gets the most attention, both from the service and in the media.  When security is effective as we saw at our inspection of Humber, it can make a significant difference. At Oakwood the installation of twenty-five new cameras had considerably increased live coverage of risk areas. Additional netting at Bristol was helping to improve the defence against throwovers, where we also praised the redirection of resource by leaders to increase the number of cell searches. Strong partnership working with the police is also making a difference in many jails, with more ANPR, effective information sharing and data analysis helping to drive a more strategic approach.

But in too many prisons efforts to thwart supply are failing and drones are getting ever more sophisticated. A lack of resource is often a key barrier, and we make this clear in many of our reports. At Erlestoke, despite the efforts of leaders, a lack of funding for perimeter closed-circuit TV was hindering efforts to prevent the ingress of drugs. At Nottingham, the frequent redeployment of staff held back aspects of security, such as the timeliness of intelligence-led searches. The recently published MoJ evaluation of the Security Investment Programme serves as a stark reminder, that promising initiatives risk not achieving their full impact, in establishments grappling with staff shortages and retention issues. A predicament that will be all too familiar for many of you in this room.

But prisons cannot afford for initiatives such as these to not achieve their full impact. Drug abuse continues to contribute to violence across the estate, threatening the stability of many jails and impacting the safety of prisoners and staff.

The focus, however, cannot be just on reducing supply. Reducing demand and treating those with drug problems are equally important.

In terms of treatment the picture is mixed. Incentivised drug-free living wings (ISFLs) are now common, but the objectives are often not clear. Nor are we convinced that staff are always sure about the purpose of these wings, or the criteria for admission. Some seem to be no more than enhanced wings, rather than places where recovering substance misusers can remain drug free. Many are in the relatively early stages of development. When I visited Cardiff, the ISFL there was emphatically drug-free and prisoners were involved in the sort of transformational, group work programmes that have proved to be effective in helping people to turn their lives around. At Lancaster Farms, there was an impressive, intensive exercise-based programme being run by a local charity that was supporting prisoners with gym membership and accommodation on release. Elsewhere though, NA and AA meetings are sadly not back in all the prisons in which they were operating before the pandemic. I would like to see the use of more technology to allow more frequent meetings to take place.

And then finally there’s demand. Many of you will not be surprised that I continue to be deeply concerned about key drivers of demand for drugs, such as poor regime and lack of time out of cell, leaving many prisoners bored and frustrated. This leads me to the second area I want to discuss today – purposeful activity and risk reduction work.

Purposeful activity and risk reduction work

In 2023-24, purposeful activity continued to be the worst performing area that we inspect. With our colleagues at Ofsted, we judged it to be poor or not sufficiently good in 31 of the 39 adult prisons we inspected. And in 18, outcomes had got worse since the previous inspection. Moorland was the only training prison considered to be reasonably good, a real concern given that these jails should be providing opportunities for prisoners to develop their skills before they return to the community.

It worries me greatly that current low levels of time out of cell and the limited purposeful activity offer we find in many jails have become the ‘new’ normal. In a findings paper that we published recently about closed prisons, prisoners told us about the detrimental effects of excessive periods locked up on their mental and physical health. Many spoke about the limited opportunities for work or to attend education, and the sense of hopelessness and boredom as a result. A prisoner in one training prison told us: “I feel I’m just left in the cell to rot, no work, no money, I’m really finding life hard…”

Time out of cell also impacted on prisoners’ perception of staff; prisoners with less than two hours out of their cell each day were less likely than their peers to report feeling respected by staff (56% compared with 77%). And they were also less likely to feel as though their experiences in prison made them less likely to reoffend, compared to those who were unlocked for longer.

Many officers, relatively new to the service, will never have known the regimes that were run pre-pandemic. They are reliant on leaders to model the sorts of motivating cultures that can be possible in prison, underpinned by positive, purposeful activity.

If you haven’t already, I would strongly recommend a read of our thematic on Improving Behaviour in Prisons. Jails like Rye Hill, Buckley Hall, Oakwood and Swansea are doing some fantastic work, and recognise education, vocational skills and work as critical components of their prison regime. These prisons have strong safety records and help to show what is possible, without any need to sacrifice control. Prisoners at these jails want to do better and are provided with a range of opportunities to leave bad behaviour and violence behind. A prisoner at Swansea told us: “Extremely positive culture – doesn’t matter where you come from…everyone’s together…not fighting…”  In the report we also highlight the importance of leadership. Whilst being visible doesn’t necessarily make you a good governor, the best prisons have governors that are often seen on the wings and known by staff and prisoners alike. There is nothing more depressing for me on inspection than when I am asked if I am the governor.

I appreciate that some jails, particularly inner-city Victorian locals, face unique obstacles. A shortage of space or very high numbers of prisoners on remand for example have no quick fix. And yet I continue to go to other prisons that do have reasonably good facilities and staffing profiles, only to still find empty workshops, classrooms with a handful of prisoners in and prisoners underemployed in roles like wing-cleaning that takes them half an hour at most. Many prisons are also not running enough accredited programmes and do not have enough spaces, leading to long waiting lists. Our partners in Ofsted continue to find inappropriate curriculums, where the range, quantity and quality of education, training and work is simply not equipping prisoners with the skills they need for employment on release. HMPPS has got to be more ambitious in this area. Ultimately, more prisons must become places of purpose, that provide opportunities for prisoners genuinely to turn their lives around and start to reduce their risk. After all, if fewer prisoners reoffended on release, the population wouldn’t be as high.

This work then needs to be encouraged, sustained, and supported on release. SDS40 and the attention around it has usefully revealed some of the challenges many of us in this room are all too familiar with. But prisons can only do so much, the work of probation and other services is critical in reducing reoffending and recall rates. The importance of prisoners being released to suitable accommodation, for example, is vital.

Leadership and staff support

Finally, a word on leadership and staff support. Effective, trusting relationships between prisoners and staff, with clear rules, help to make establishments safer and support the reduction of risk. This is not a new or profound assertion, and yet in too many prisons we inspect, instead of ‘effective’ or ‘trusting’, we are characterising staff-prisoner relationships as ‘perfunctory’ and ‘transactional’. A common source of frustration among prisoners is inexperienced staff who are unfamiliar with the prison, the wing, or the prisoners, and who are failing both to support prisoners to get everyday things done quickly and to enforce the rules. The critical work of officers and custodial managers out on the wings cannot be overstated. It is these staff groups who ultimately ‘carry’ a culture and positive staff-prisoner relationships underpin good outcomes in all four of our healthy prison assessments. Where staff are visible, and well supported by managers and senior leaders, prisoner frustrations can be addressed quickly, and behaviour managed more effectively.

Prisoners tell us that they want staff who are caring, supportive and understanding. They want officers who understand who they are, ask a bit about their friends and family, know what they like and dislike and encourage their hopes for the future. But prisoners are also clear that they need, and are reliant upon, staff to keep them safe. They want staff to uphold high standards of behaviour and challenge those who breach the rules. They value and respect officers who are fair and consistent in their application of rules, systems, and procedures. As is often the way, prisoners themselves say it best, as one man at Holme House put it: “A good prison officer is firm and fair…open-minded and not thinking just a prisoner is a criminal…we’re still humans…try to get to know them and what makes them tick… But don’t be too soft.”

I meet many outstanding leaders and staff in prisons, but I have concerns about some of those entering the service and the extent to which they reflect the ideal officer described earlier. I am hopeful that in the future, there will be a greater focus on who is recruited, with prison leaders directly involved in the process and face-to-face, values-based interviews, that get the right people into the job.

For those selected, unless adequate support and continuous professional development is in place, many new recruits are unlikely to become the officers, and, in future, the governors, that the service needs. Our 2023-24 Annual Report, published in September, contains a statistic that ought to be a real cause for concern. In our staff surveys, 30% in frontline operational roles told us they met a manager or mentor only once a year or less. I can’t think of another profession where that sort of arrangement would be acceptable, especially not where staff are likely to witness what are sometimes traumatic events. Although our focus at the inspectorate is on outcomes for prisoners, I am acutely aware that improved outcomes rely on high-quality staff delivering necessary improvements. More is needed to genuinely support staff in the service, at all levels, and I commend those governors going above and beyond to improve the status quo.

At Belmarsh for example, Jenny Louis had proactively put support in place for new staff. As a result, staff retention levels at that jail were among the best in London and in our survey, 75% of respondents reported that the support they received from their line manager was good or very good. At Hull, staff were benefitting from additional training days to help build their confidence and skills and at Woodhill leaders had increased staff support through weekly supervision or ‘team time’ for most house units, regular training and well-being events.

We recently invited former governor Jamie Bennett, who will be familiar to many of you, to conduct a review of our inspection of leadership, two years after we started to focus more in this area. Thank you to the many governors who kindly spoke with us as part of this work. We will continue to recognise the excellent work that so many of you and your teams do in prisons – on many occasions we are able to report positively on leaders, in prisons where it is the hardest to get good HMIP scores. Governors we spoke with told us that they inevitably take this part of the report very personally. It is a sign of how dedicated you are to the role, and we take our responsibility in assessing leadership very seriously. We will be making some minor changes to our methodology and framework to continue to refine how we inspect this area and will share more information soon.

Conclusion

I began by saying that there is no doubt that these are difficult times for prisons. That’s true, and I have not had time today to cover other areas that we are all worried about, for example prison infrastructure and living conditions, levels of self-harm, waiting times for transfers between prisons and secure hospitals and more.

Being a governor is a tough job, and there is much that is good in our prisons that you can be proud of. Thank you for the work you do and for the positive way you engage with us at the inspectorate.

If I can make one plea it is for you to get out and visit other places. There is always a good reason to stay stuck in your own prison, but I urge you to take opportunities to see how your colleagues operate and what goes on in their jails. Being a governor is a lonely job at times and the more mutually supportive networks that develop, the better. Events like this and Governing Governors Forum are important for this very reason. Sometimes it is only by seeing the way other people have solved problems that you can see clearly how to deal with your own challenges.

Thank you for having me, have a great conference and, even if you don’t, I’ll look forward to seeing you soon. I’d now like to handover to you for any questions.