HMP Berwyn – strong leadership but more to be done to rehabilitate
Inspectors to HMP Berwyn, a category C training prison in North Wales, found a strong leadership team providing decent outcomes, but improvement was needed in purposeful activity and rehabilitation and release planning. The prison, one of the newest and largest in the estate, held 1,835 men at the time of the inspection.
Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, said:
“Leadership was strong. The governor had been in post since 2019 and was highly experienced. He made himself visible, and his energy was setting the tone in the prison.” In particular, the governor had approached recruitment and retention creatively and ensured it was led at a senior level. However, there continued to be staff shortages, which affected the delivery of some key services in health care, purposeful activity, and resettlement and release.
Efforts to reduce violence were successful in creating a safer prison than at our last inspection, but levels of violence remained too high. The rate of self-harm was also high, but leaders had responded to this and it had been falling for the last six months. Data on self-harm was collected but not used effectively to understand the drivers behind self-harm.
Prisoners continued to spend far too long behind their doors. While full-time workers could be unlocked for about nine hours a day, most prisoners worked part-time or were unemployed and had much less time out of cell. There were insufficient work and education places for the population, and the prisoners who did have places often did not attend classes regularly enough. More needed to be done to ensure that the prison was fulfilling its role as a training establishment.
Staff shortages plagued the offender management unit, which meant existing prison offender managers had high caseloads and not enough contact with prisoners. Public protection phone and mail monitoring had not been carried out for many of those posing a significant risk to the public. However, work to support resettlement, including finding employment and housing, was very good, and there were plans to expand this work.
Mr Taylor said:
“Berwyn is a competently run prison. Outcomes were either reasonable or improving and with the capable leadership we observed, there is every reason for confidence about the prison’s immediate future.”
Notes to editors
- Read the HMP Berwyn report, published on 6 September 2022.
- HM Inspectorate of Prisons is an independent inspectorate, inspecting places of detention to report on conditions and treatment and promote positive outcomes for those detained and the public.
- HMP Berwyn is a category C training and resettlement prison with a reception function.
- At the time of this inspection, the prison held 1,835 prisoners.
- Inspectors identified seven examples of notable positive practice during this inspection.
- The inspection took place between 16–17 and 23– 27 May 2022.
- Please contact media@hmiprisons.gov.uk if you would like more information.