What happens to prisoners on a Friday?
We routinely find impoverished regimes on our prison inspections, with most prisoners spending long periods of time locked in their cells with little to occupy them. Time out of cell is even worse on Saturdays and Sundays. But what about Fridays in prison? Are regimes similar to Monday to Thursday, with some access to purposeful activity, or is Friday the start of a long weekend of lock up? Sara Pennington led a team of inspectors to find out.
Our unannounced visits to 12 prisons in England and Wales revealed that, in most, the daily routine on a Friday was restricted, typically ending with lunchtime lock-up. Very few prisoners participated in education, work, or meaningful activities in the afternoon. We found many locked in their cells for extended periods, often bored and frustrated. In some cases, prisoners locked up at Friday lunchtime remained confined to their cells until Saturday afternoon.
In most prisons we visited, Friday afternoon was, in effect, an unofficial extension of the weekend, with the majority of workshops and education activities not contracted to operate. However, the kitchen and some other industries essential to the running of the prison, such as waste management, continued to run. There were no classes or workshops open at all on a Friday at two prisons we visited. At another, we found just nine prisoners attending the Friday morning education session that was planned for 30 prisoners. While some workshops had been scheduled in one prison, few were actually running and attendance was poor.
We found almost two-thirds of prisoners locked up in a resettlement and training prison, where there were, inexplicably, 15 workshop instructors on duty but no prisoners. In another prison, the Friday activity session only ran from 9am to 10.30am, after which prisoners were given their lunch at – or before – 11am.
Most of the jails offered prisoners a limited opportunity in the morning to shower and clean their cells. Beyond this, little structured activity was available generally for the rest of the day. Unemployed prisoners could often only expect to receive an hour out of their cells for domestic tasks, association and exercise, although this was no worse than any other day of the week. As one prisoner told us:
“You’ve got an hour for showers, exercise, ‘sosh [association], the lot… Then you’re banged up. It’s not enough.”
Low Newton was a notable exception: Friday afternoon activities, including education, had been reinstated after listening to feedback that women were bored. Ashfield also maintained a more structured and active Friday routine – prisoners were able to attend education or workshop sessions in the morning and participate in enrichment activities in the afternoon, providing a fuller and more engaging day. We found some impressive afternoon activities running at Bronzefield, including a creative writing workshop and the Duke of Edinburgh award, but only for a minority of women. Stocken had also run an employment event on a Friday afternoon.
More positively, the opportunity for social visits was sometimes offered on a Friday afternoon. We found that gym and library continued to run on Fridays in some prisons, but this was not consistent, and sessions were limited to small numbers of prisoners.
Jails often made use of the otherwise inactive Friday afternoons to distribute canteen goods to prisoners, but the process of unlocking prisoners individually to distribute items was slow and consumed much of the afternoon. Although access to Muslim prayers operated smoothly and on time in most prisons we visited, in one we found prisoners unable to take part in this act of worship due to the unavailability of an Imam.
Some governors we spoke to were resigned to Fridays becoming an extension of the weekend. Others expressed a desire to run a more purposeful regime and were frustrated at the contract limitations that had failed to resource education and workshops in the afternoon. A group of prisoners told us that their strongest wish was for Friday to be a working weekday like any other and to prevent the very restricted weekend regime from beginning on a Friday.
However, with real-terms cuts to education delivery of as much as 50% in some prisons, the new contracts introduced in October are likely to further limit opportunities for a full and productive purposeful week. How far Friday mornings routinely become the start of a weekend of extended and excessive lock-up in prisons will be reviewed by inspectors in the coming months.