Read recent blogs and posts from Charlie Taylor and our staff.
14 August 2024
Following a visit to the impressive Oakwood, Charlie Taylor discusses how strong leadership, high expectations of prisoners, and a culture of prisoner-led initiatives are at the heart of its achievements.
Children’s custody: a decade of missed opportunities and decline
1 October 2024
In this blog, Angus Jones, HMI Prisons Team Leader for Children and Young People, talks about the sustained failure to improve outcomes for the small number of children in custody.
Prisons within prisons: what can we learn from how we manage our most dangerous offenders?
23 July 2024
Following a very positive inspection of Close Supervision Centres (CSCs), Charlie Taylor reflects on the important work being done in CSCs.
Other blogs and articles
26 November 2024
In contrast to many of our latest inspections, Rye Hill, a category B training prison holding men convicted of sexual offences, was providing good outcomes in three of our four healthy prison tests. In this blog, Angus Jones, who led the inspection, discusses how the prison achieved such impressive results.
Drugs and disorder: worrying times for prisons
25 March 2024
Following a worrying inspection at Hindley, Charlie Taylor reflects on the causes and consequences of a resurgence in drugs in prisons.
“For the first time in my experience as Chief Inspector, more people in a jail were under the influence of drugs than sober. We could smell cannabis on the wings and its effects on prisoners were evident.“
Bringing closed worlds into the open
16 January 2024
Sophie Riley, Head of Research, Data and Thematics at HMI Prisons, explains why we have worked with Royal Holloway to make 20 years of prisoner survey data available to other researchers.
“Not many people get to go into a prison and ask the men and women behind bars what they think and how they are feeling…“