News

Failing to teach prisoners to read leaves up to half unable to access vital rehabilitative education while in prison, according to new research by Ofsted and HMI Prisons. Without the ability to read, released prisoners will find it harder to make a successful return to society.

Outcomes for children held in HMYOI Wetherby – the largest young offender institution (YOI) in the country – were found by inspectors to have declined in the provision of purposeful activity and resettlement. Although the number of children had been much reduced, the prison had lost ground, inspectors said, partly due to the pandemic.

Leaders at HMP Durham, a men’s category B prison covering the north of England, had brought down levels of violence by almost two-thirds since the previous inspection, said HM Inspectorate of Prisons. Joint working between security, drug strategy and safety managers had led to the reduction, and the rate of violence and disorder was below the average for a local prison in England. This was reflected in the Inspectorate’s survey of prisoners, where fewer men than at the previous inspection said they had experienced verbal abuse, physical assault, threats or intimidation, or theft.

When I first became a head teacher, my school was in a troubled state. Some established staff members had just left, the children were anxious and physical restraint had become the first rather than the last resort. There were many things that needed to be fixed, but I knew that if we did not get the basics right, we would never make progress. For the first six months I had three main priorities: find and recruit effective staff, keep the children in the classroom (they were in the habit of jumping over the fence) and rigorously enforce our behaviour management policy, establishing clear expectations and making sure that rewards and sanctions were consistently applied.

Many prisoners at HMP Thameside, a category B local men’s prison based in south-east London, were spending too much time locked in their cells, HM Inspectorate of Prisons found. Some, such as remand prisoners – 61 of whom had been on remand for over a year – were locked up for up to 23.5 hours a day. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor said the prison had been too slow to increase the amount of time that prisoners were unlocked after an outbreak of COVID-19 and more should have been done to open up the regime.

Conditions for prisoners held in HMP Swaleside in Kent were still not good enough, said inspectors who visited the Isle of Sheppey prison in October. The last full inspection in 2018 of the category B training prison for men – part of the high security and long-term estate – had raised sufficient concerns to lead to a follow-up independent review of progress in 2019. This had found insufficient or no meaningful progress in eight out of 12 previous recommendations.

A women’s prison has been assessed by HM Inspectorate of Prisons as poor for safety in a “rare and unexpected finding” in a recent inspection, which identified very high violence and self-harm and inadequate care for vulnerable women.

HMP & YOI Rochester, in Kent, was found by inspectors to be reasonably safe and settled, despite some poor living conditions for prisoners.

Styal women’s prison in Cheshire remained safe and respectful, inspectors found, but faced the challenges of staffing shortages and an increase in lower-level violence as a result of frustrations with COVID-19 restrictions.