HMP Lindholme: serious drug problems and staff shortages hampering work to prepare high-risk offenders for release
An inspection of HMP Lindholme, a category C prison in South Yorkshire, has found that, rather than working to reduce the risk of reoffending, it was failing to provide high-risk prisoners with access to the interventions, education or training that they needed ahead of release, and many of them were developing drug problems while they were there.
An inspection of HMP Lindholme, a category C prison in South Yorkshire, has found that, rather than working to reduce the risk of reoffending, it was failing to provide high-risk prisoners with access to the interventions, education or training that they needed ahead of release, and many of them were developing drug problems while they were there.
A lack of purposeful activity led many to use drugs as a distraction from boredom. While PE facilities were excellent, instructor shortages meant prisoners’ access to them was limited, and there were not enough places in education or training for the whole population.
Although Lindholme is not a resettlement prison, national population pressures meant that men were being released directly from the jail at the end of their sentence instead of being transferred to a resettlement prison that would better prepare them for release: in the 12 months leading up to the inspection, 86 men had been released from Lindholme. Most prisoners were assessed as high or very high risk on arrival, which made inspectors particularly concerned by this failure in public protection.
When I walked round the jail, almost every prisoner I spoke to complained about the lack of support from the OMU [offender management unit]. Many had a feeling of helplessness, unable to progress with their sentence or complete the non-existent accredited programmes that featured on many of their sentence plans. It was disappointing to find things even worse in this area than in 2017, when we also noted long-term failings.”
The drug situation, meanwhile, was so serious that, despite the availability of a drug recovery unit and substance misuse team, 21% of prisoners reported that they had developed a problem with drugs since arriving at the jail, and half said that it was easy to get hold of them. As well as being the cause of most deaths at the prison in recent years, drugs had also been responsible for debt problems that drove the higher than average and increasing levels of violence. Yet there was still no prison-wide, coordinated approach to countering the problem. The size of the site meant that drones were often able to fly in contraband undetected and there was no routine searching of staff or X-ray machines at the gate. Inexplicably and, despite bids from the jail, the prison service had failed to put in place the technological and physical solutions that have helped to reduce drug supply in other prisons.
Most prisoners were not spending their time effectively at Lindholme and there were simply not enough activity spaces for the population, meaning that they were not getting the training or education that was going to help them to get work on release.
Prisons do not just have a responsibility to protect the public by keeping dangerous offenders behind bars; they also have a vital role in working with men and women during their time in custody to reduce the risk of them reoffending and creating further victims on crime on their release. This was a really worrying inspection of a prison fundamentally failing to deliver this with some potentially very dangerous men, and arguably allowing the risks to heighten by failing to get on top of a really serious drug problem. This would be worrying in any circumstances, but given plans to begin releasing prisoners early it is absolutely essential that the prison service takes action to make sure that people’s time in custody effectively reduces the risk of harm that they will pose on release.”
Notes to editors
- Read the HMP Lindholme report, published on 24 October 2023.
- 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 Lindholme is a category C training prison in South Yorkshire holding 898 prisoners at the time of the inspection. All men were serving sentences of four years or over.
- This inspection took place between 17-27 July 2023.
- Please email media@hmiprisons.gov.uk if you would like more information.