Yesterday HMI Charlie Taylor lost his patience with HMPPS and the Minister Alex Chalk MP and wrote him a letter. Probation staff must continue to reflect on how much longer they can possibly continue to be part of an increasingly dysfunctional and abusive HMPPS, especially when there are over 5,300 bureaucrats just a couple of miles away at HQ doing what exactly?
Urgent Notification: HMP Wandsworth
In accordance with the Protocol between HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Ministry of Justice dated October 2019, I am writing to you to invoke the Urgent Notification process following our unannounced inspection of HMP Wandsworth between 22nd April and 2nd May 2024. The protocol sets out that this letter will be placed in the public domain, and that the Secretary of State commits to respond publicly within 28 days.
Wandsworth is a prison that is still reeling from the very high-profile escape in 2023. Our findings suggest that security remains a significant concern, although failings were evident in almost all aspects of the prison’s operation. This was reflected in our healthy prison test scores of poor for “safety”, “respect” and “purposeful activity” and not sufficiently good in “preparation for release”.
When we last inspected Wandsworth in September 2021, we reported serious concerns about outcomes for prisoners and at that time I cautioned against plans to increase the prison roll:
“Leaders in this crumbling, overcrowded, vermin-infested prison will need considerable ongoing support from the prison service…It is hard to see how HMP Wandsworth’s limited progress can be sustained if prisoner numbers in this jail are allowed to increase as they are scheduled to do next April.”
The population at the time of that inspection was 1,364. When we returned this month, it had risen to 1,513.
I have issued an Urgent Notification for the following reasons:
• Despite a high-profile escape from Wandsworth in September 2023, inspectors found significant weaknesses in many aspects of security. Wings were chaotic and staff across most units were unable to confirm where all prisoners were during the working day. There was no reliable roll that could assure leaders that all prisoners were accounted for. Given the recent escape, it was unfathomable that leaders had not focussed their attention on this area.
• Despite a high-profile escape from Wandsworth in September 2023, inspectors found significant weaknesses in many aspects of security. Wings were chaotic and staff across most units were unable to confirm where all prisoners were during the working day. There was no reliable roll that could assure leaders that all prisoners were accounted for. Given the recent escape, it was unfathomable that leaders had not focussed their attention on this area.
• There had been 10 self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection, seven of which had occurred in the last 12 months. The rate of self-harm was high and rising, and yet around 40% of emergency cell bells were not answered within five minutes.
• Overall rates of violence, including serious assaults, had increased since the last inspection and were higher than most similar prisons. In our survey, 69% of prisoners said they had felt unsafe at Wandsworth.
• Over half (51%) of prisoners surveyed said it was easy to get illicit drugs and the smell of cannabis was ubiquitous. Although leaders had identified this issue as presenting the highest level of security risk, they had suspended drug testing between August 2023 and January 2024. In the most recent confirmed random drug test results (February 2024), 44% of prisoners tested positive.
• Wandsworth was badly overcrowded and has a transient population, with more than half on remand. Living conditions were very poor, cells were cramped and ill-equipped, and the prison was still too dirty. The fabric of the buildings and facilities including showers and heating still needed significant investment to bring them up to a decent standard.
• In our survey only 41% of prisoners said that staff treated them with respect, significantly lower than in comparable prisons. Very limited time out of cell, absent staff, and a failure to deliver any key work reduced the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships on wings.
• A substantial lack of work and education spaces and poor use of those that were available meant there was very little purposeful activity. Most prisoners were unemployed and spent over 22 hours a day locked up.
• Prisoners had no idea when or if they would be unlocked each day or whether they would get access to fresh air. Life on residential units was unpredictable and confusing for staff and prisoners alike.
• Consistent failures to enable access to healthcare services due to prison staff absences resulted in important assessment and treatment interventions being curtailed. Clinic non-attendance rates were high at around 24%. The costly new health centre that was supposed to open in the summer of 2022 was still unused.
• Despite a full complement of officers, sickness, restricted duties, and training commitments meant that over a third could not be deployed to operational duties each day; this led to curtailed regimes, cross-deployment, and burnt out staff.
• Inexperience across every grade of operational staff was preventing them from bringing about much needed change. Staff were not wilfully neglectful, they simply did not understand their role and they lacked direction, training, and consistent support from leaders.
The poor outcomes we found at Wandsworth stemmed from poor leadership at every level of the prison, from HMPPS and the Ministry of Justice, leading to systemic and cultural failures that have led to this shocking decline. There was a degree of despondency amongst prisoners that I have not come across in my time as Chief Inspector.
Many well-meaning and hard-working leaders and staff persevered at Wandsworth, but they were often fighting against a tide of cross-cutting, intractable problems that require comprehensive, long-term solutions.
For this troubled prison to begin to recover, Wandsworth needs permanent experienced leaders at all levels who are invested in the long-term future of the prison to improve security, safety and guide their less experienced colleagues.
Yours sincerely
Charlie Taylor
--oo00oo--
The Governing Governor having resigned her post, but professionally decided to stay on pending a new appointment, the Prison Governors Association were quick to respond:-
PRISON GOVERNORS’ ASSOCIATION – URGENT NOTIFICATION AT HMP WANDSWORTH
The decision by Charlie Taylor, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons to issue an Urgent Notification (UN) at HMP Wandsworth will be of no surprise to the Government, Ministry of Justice or to the Senior Leadership of His Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS).
The Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) has been highlighting the challenges facing our members in Wandsworth and other prisons for years. We are in a position now, where the levers needed to relieve the stress facing many prisons are not available. Although the chronic shortage of staff across the estate has reduced it remains stubbornly high in some prisons. HMP Wandsworth was built in 1851. It has cells designed to hold 964 prisoners. At the time of the inspection, it held around 1500.
The Governor and her team are in an almost impossible situation, trying to maintain security, order and control whist helping prisoners to reduce the chances of reoffending on release in a prison holding more than 500 more men than it was designed to hold in Victorian times in buildings that haven’t been properly maintained by the Ministry of Justice for the last 15 years. The Governor had decided to leave HMPPS early in the 2024 and resigned during the inspection. This is undoubtedly due in part to the personal toll that running a prison like Wandsworth in current times takes on those who do so.
The biggest lever for reducing a prison’s population is no longer available as it was when the UN process was introduced several years ago. Then, following a UN, prisons reduced their population by hundreds, allowing a process of improvement to take place. The prison population is around 88,000 in an estate designed to hold less than 80,000, and it is projected to continue to grow. Government policy of locking up more people for longer, making it more difficult to release them, has paralysed a system to the point it is unable to make a difference for prisons which face the gravest of challenges. It is directly impacting on the safety of prisoners, staff and the public. The impact on the health and wellbeing of prison leaders and their staff working in such an environment is significant. It is grossly unfair that our members must shoulder the burden of a crisis which is not of their making. Neither is it of the making of the Senior Leadership of HMPPS, who still have the confidence of the PGA. It is the Government that needs to act, and act now.
Building more prisons whilst failing to invest in the existing prison estate simply to allow more and more people to be sent to prison is a mistake, it does not effectively protect the public. Ministers have been warned of the consequences at Wandsworth and across the wider prison estate. On sending their report to the Minister in September 2023 the Chair of the Independent Monitoring Board at Wandsworth, Tim Aikens, said:
“Recent events at Wandsworth have demonstrated the shortcomings of the prison system that the IMB has been highlighting repeatedly for many years. Prisoners are being failed and most have a severely reduced chance of rehabilitation upon release. We are told there is significant investment in the prison system, but we see little evidence of this in Wandsworth.”
The PGA call on the Government and Opposition to have the courage to move away from being simply “tough on crime” to putting resources into public services, such as mental health and drug treatment, to reduce the burden on our prisons and really being “tough on the causes of crime.” This simply cannot go on.
But there was no HMI letter to Alex Chalk about the probation crisis even though it’s now mainstream news !!
ReplyDelete“Freed prisoners will no longer be supervised by probation officers as experts claim major Government changes 'will put lives at risk'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13402357/Freed-prisoners-no-longer-supervised-probation-officers-experts-claim-major-Government-changes-lives-risk.html
Are we now going to see ECSL doubled again, 140 or 180 days, and for the probation service to manage the early release chaos? Why hasn’t HMI Charlie Taylor commented on that ???
ReplyDeleteHow many of these 5,300 bureaucrats have probation qualifications? They can come and hold a caseload.
ReplyDeleteGoodness that letter was hard to read. What awful conditions for prisoners to live in and staff to work in. All those suicides and self-harm rife. Frequent violence. No wonder drugs are heavily used, it’s the only coping strategy available. I cannot find the words. It is absolutely shameful.
ReplyDeleteThere's just too many people in the UK being funnelled into the criminal justice system.
DeleteIt's the criminal justice system itself that is over populated, not just the individual agencies within it.
https://insidetime.org/newsround/prison-governors-criticise-ever-longer-sentences/
'Getafix
Completely agree with that Getafix. A few blogs ago there was a debate about terminology and labelling: POPs, Offenders, Service Users, Clients etc. I'm for "Citizens". UK is incarcerating its Citizens in unprecendented numbers, and for increasing lengths of time. The BAME community know how this works, how it feels to have members of their community banged up in unprecendented numbers. That actually applies to every social group in UK, if you cast your eye over the border to Europe, albeit still even MORE disproportionately to minority groups.
DeleteThe new chief of the prison governors’ union, Tom Wheatley (pictured), has challenged politicians to jail fewer people and “have the courage” to free those still trapped in prisons under the abolished Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence.
DeleteHe told The Independent in his first interview in the role there needs to be “a fundamental rethink of how Britain punishes criminals”. Governors, he said, face an “impossible task of keeping crumbling, overcrowded and increasingly violent prisons running in a way that keeps the public safe. Ever-longer sentences keep placing an unsustainable strain on the prison system unless it is properly funded, making it harder to rehabilitate dangerous offenders. Politicians must be brave enough to consider making fundamental changes to the way we use prisons.”
He highlighted “the blot on our legal system” of IPP, which saw people handed minimum jail terms but no maximum. Despite the policy being axed over a decade ago and criticised by UN torture tsar Alice Jill Edwards, thousands remain trapped years beyond their original tariff, often for minor crimes, with among the highest suicide and self-harm rates of all inmates. He said: “Courage is needed to do that because if just one reoffends, and that reoffending was serious, there would be criticism.” Inside Time revealed that less than 1 per cent of those released under IPP have gone on to commit serious further offences, 83 people, which is less than the number who have taken their own life in prison.
Mr Wheatley worked in prisons for three decades, and during that time the inmate population almost doubled to around 88,000 in an estate built to house 79,000. With the prison population projected to reach 106,000 by 2027, the increase is mostly due to tougher sentences, with average tariff lengths having grown by half in the decade to 2021.
“It’s very difficult when somebody has committed an awful crime to argue that sending them to prison forever isn’t the best way to protect the public,” said Mr Wheatley. “If you look back at where the prison population started to increase significantly, the 1993 killing of James Bulger sits at the beginning. That was a horrific offence and shocked people. But what I would want from politicians is leadership that says, ‘Does this awful event mean we need to change the law?’”
Capacity is failing to keep up so ministers have been forced to free inmates at overcrowded jails up to 60 days early and plan to introduce a presumption against jailing people for sentences under a year. Meanwhile, years of overcrowding and underfunding has hampered maintenance of prisons, some of which Mr Wheatley believes should be decommissioned.
“In a world of limited resources, we have to be clear about the purpose of prison and how
we pay. Governors are not able to provide an effective prison service,” he warned, adding: “If we’re not providing rehabilitation but keeping prisoners locked in cells for 22 or 23 hours a day we might be having a detrimental effect on them, making them more risky rather than less.”
i'm guessing that'll be phil wheatley's son? The one who fucked up HMP Nottm?
Deletehttps://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/fired-prison-worker-made-100-2119396
Delete"The decision to axe a jail whistleblower on the grounds of “medical inefficiency” was deemed appropriate by a Prison Service chief, an employment tribunal heard.
Diane Ward, 55, claims she was unfairly dismissed after 31 years with the Prison Service because she made 100 complaints about “drug-ridden” HMP Nottingham.
She was dismissed in 2015 by Tom Wheatley, the Governor of the prison where Ms Ward had worked since 1997."
Ian Acheson has an excellent thread on this: https://x.com/NotThatBigIan/status/1788604749056446534
ReplyDeleteWe are long overdue a rethink about the purpose of prison. We have the highest prison population in Western Europe per capita. And politicians want to add to this estate!? It's uncomfortable for society to consider the reasons for this. Surely our society isn't more 'criminal' than our neighbours. We have a culture which seems to want offenders to suffer and be punished, despite research showing that punitive measures usually don't work, and that prison often increases recidivism.
ReplyDeleteThe UK used to be at the forefront of rehabilitation and contemporary practice. But now we have a society which seems to have no interest in this. I read that our government are considering renting prison space from other countries. Surely they should be asking '"how have you achieved a situation where you have prison spaces available?".
As a result of many things (TR etc) we have lost our core identity. Or more accurately, the powers that be have absolutely no idea of our purpose and more importantly, what our purpose should be. The entire criminal justice system needs an evidence-based rethink.
(PO for 22 years)
I agree but would go further. The whole social contract needs renewing. We as a society really need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions. What are ‘the rules’? And if we do our bit to stick to them and make a contribution, what can we expect in return? Tied into this must be, if I make a mistake what do I need to do to get back to being a productive member of society?
ReplyDeleteEvery public servant I know feels as if they are operating in a broken system and is completely fed up (to varying degrees). This really cannot go on. We must find a way of pulling together to make our collective voice heard. Far more unites us in front line professions than divides us. The powers that be are full of people like Zahawi. Multi millionaire and engages in illegal practices to avoid paying tax. Then lies about it and sends lawyers to threaten those who expose him. This is the kind of person we are trying to appeal to (at the moment). We are onto a loser.
The content of that letter is one of the most powerful things I have read in years. It evidences that far from providing any rehabilitation, the criminal justice system is doing nothing more than adding to people’s trauma. So much so they are taking their own lives or regularly self harming. What an absolute tragedy and waste of human life. I also really feel for the staff. I can’t imagine working in that environment it must be so awful.
https://insidetime.org/newsround/labour-accuses-tories-of-covering-up-early-releases/
DeleteThe Labour party has accused the Government of a “cover up” over the number of prisoners being released early to deal with the overcrowding crisis in jails.
DeleteShabana Mahmood (pictured), Labour’s shadow justice secretary, said ministers’ “stonewalling” over the End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme was “nothing short of a scandal” and that they had a “moral responsibility” to “come clean”.
In October, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk announced that hundreds of prisoners would be freed up to 18 days before their scheduled release date – which is usually half-way through their sentence – to ease pressure on the most overcrowded jails. In March, the scheme was expanded to enable prisoners to be freed up to 60 days early.
People sentenced to less than four years in jail are eligible for the scheme, unless their conviction was for a sexual or terrorism offence.
Labour has asked 14 parliamentary questions requesting data on the scheme, such as how many criminals have been released early and the breakdown by different offences. However, the Ministry of Justice declined to release figures, saying they are “intended for future publication” and statistics will “be based on one year’s worth of data and published annually”. Labour points out the MoJ releases weekly prison statistics and quarterly figures on other measures.
Ms Mahmood suggested that the Government is withholding the information until after the general election. She told The Telegraph: “They should level with the public about the sort of people that they are releasing early.” She said those eligible for release include “violent offenders, domestic abusers, stalkers. I believe they have a responsibility to share the data because of increased pressure on the probation service. If we see the data, we can get a proper sense of whether the probation service can cope.”
Conservative ministers have pointed out that Labour, whilst in government in 2007, introduced its own 18-day early release scheme to deal with prison overcrowding. However, according to Ms Mahmood, “the big difference” between the schemes is that “we released data, we replied to parliamentary questions”. She added: “It was a much more transparent scheme, whereas this government just isn’t giving any data at all.”
Ms Mahmood said prison capacity was a “national emergency” because the Government “haven’t built enough prison places. When you run out of prison places, every option you’ve got is pretty terrible” and if Labour wins the general election it would immediately “press the button on prison building” by “getting rid of the blocks in the planning system”.
Asked whether new prisons would be a tough sell to local communities, Ms Mahmood replied: “Once prisons are built they become part of the fabric of a local area, in that they are a good source of jobs. That can be a real positive for a local economy. And also, if you’re running your prisons properly and they’re not overcrowded, the threat of escape is minimal.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We make no apology for ensuring the data we release is accurate and quality-assured, which is why figures on ECSL – which began in October 2023 – will be published on an annual basis, in line with other comparable statistics.”
A Government source accused Labour of “pure hypocrisy” for running an “early release scheme of over 80,000 prisoners between 2007 and 2010 which had fewer safety checks and restrictions in place”. The source added: “Labour has also not said if they would [end] ECSL because they know it is necessary to alleviate the unprecedented pressure on our prisons following the pandemic and barristers’ strike, a pressure which has been seen in prisons around the world.”
But it’s not just early release. It’s early release from prison 70 days early AND THEN the probation supervision part of the sentence for those released from prison and sentenced to community orders and suspended sentences ends early too.
DeleteGuardian May 9th:-
ReplyDeleteThe government has formally triggered a crisis measure to ease prison overcrowding by using police cells to house inmates.
The confirmation of Operation Safeguard by the Ministry of Justice follows a decision to consider releasing some prisoners 70 days before their sentences were due to end.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Triggering Operation Safeguard is not an unprecedented measure.
“It is helping us respond to acute capacity pressures caused in part by barristers’ industrial action and the aftermath of the pandemic, while we press ahead with delivering the biggest expansion of prison places in a century including six new jails.”
The MoJ denies that the measure exposes a failure of planning and said the number of police cells needed would be kept under constant review, in part to keep costs down.
One source said a police force had cleared 20 cell places this week to house people coming from prisons.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council, representing police leaders, were unable to comment.
The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said: “This is just further proof that the Conservatives have completely failed to tackle the crisis in our prisons.
“Court backlogs remain sky-high and prisons are dangerously close to capacity.
“Conservative ministers need to reassure the public that no dangerous criminals will be released early, and that they are finally taking steps to tackle the problem and address prison overcrowding.”
At the start of May the prison population in England and Wales was 87,505, with the official usable capacity put at 88,895. Capacity has increased by 3,000 places in a year, but still cannot keep up with demand.
Operation Safeguard is meant as a temporary measure and is an expensive choice to house inmates who have either been convicted or who are on remand awaiting trial.
It was triggered twice when Labour was in power and then again in November 2022, November 2023 and between February and April this year, the MoJ said.
In another sign of the crisis gripping jails, the official inspector of prisons issued a damning report about one of Britain’s biggest jails.
HMP Wandsworth, already at the centre of a series of scandals, is facing calls from the prisons watchdog to be placed into emergency measures after concerns over security, overcrowding, drugs and self-harm.
Newspapers picking up that dangerous offenders are being released under the appalling ECSL system: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/14/high-risk-offenders-included-in-early-release-scheme-prisons-inspector-says#:~:text=High%2Drisk%20offenders%20including%20a,scheme%2C%20a%20watchdog%20has%20revealed.
ReplyDelete