HMI Prisons report on inspection of HMP Dovegate: Settled, well-run and safer

Inspectors visited the training and local parts of the prison in September and October 2019. Its specialist therapeutic centre is inspected separately.

Peter Clarke, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, said: “In comparison to our inspection in 2017, we are pleased to report that this inspection found some notable improvements. Outcomes in safety and rehabilitation and release planning, like respect, were now reasonably good, although they remained insufficiently good in purposeful activity.”

Dovegate was safer than in 2017. More prisoners said they felt safe on their first night than inspectors usually find in similar prisons, with other evidence suggesting this positive sense of safety continued throughout their stay.

“Work was in place to address violence, although more needed to be done to ensure it was sufficiently impactful, as the number of violent incidents, some of them serious, continued to fluctuate,” Mr Clarke said. After reaching a peak in 2018, violence had fallen in the months before the inspection. Much of the violence was linked to drugs and debt.

Prisoners felt reasonably incentivised to behave and engage with the prison and the number of formal disciplinary adjudications had halved since the last inspection. Staff use of force had similarly fallen. However, despite a comprehensive strategy to tackle illicit drugs, they remained a key concern. “We were told that since we last inspected there had been two deaths linked to the use of illicit substances and a further three self-inflicted deaths,” Mr Clarke said. The level of self-harm, in contrast, was relatively low.

Supervision was generally good and staff-prisoner relationships constructive, and the prison was clean and well maintained. Access to amenities and kit was good. About a quarter of prisoners were locked in cell during the working day although this was the case predominantly in the local part of the prison, with the proportion falling to 16% on the training wings. There were enough activity places for most prisoners.

Support for prisoners to maintain family ties was encouraging, with enhanced family visits arrangements. Family support and parenting courses were also available. The prison held many “high risk of harm” prisoners serving long sentences. Inspectors assessed that its public protection arrangements, including planning for release, were robust and offending behaviour work was well managed. A regular multidisciplinary meeting to discuss high-risk release cases was good practice.

Support for the considerable number of prisoners being released needed to be better, however, with meaningful reviews of resettlement needs and plans prior to departure currently lacking and many individuals being released without a settled address.

Despite this, Mr Clarke said:

“We found the prison settled. Prisoners were confident and engaged, and staff were knowledgeable. The Director and his team were ensuring the prison was well run and we had every confidence that the establishment would continue to improve.”

Phil Copple, HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) Director General for Prisons, said:
“It is encouraging that this report has found good progress at Dovegate in many areas, with levels of violence falling in recent months. Searches have been stepped up to tackle drug use and prisoners are being well prepared for release. There is still work to be done, but I am pleased inspectors have the confidence in Serco and their staff to deliver further improvements.”
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Notes to editors
1. A copy of the full report, published on 13 February 2020, can be found on the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website at: www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspections
2. 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.
3 Located near Uttoxeter in Staffordshire and built in 2001, HMP Dovegate, a privately-run prison operated by SERCO, is a modern and complex institution that comprises a self-contained therapeutic community (TC), a separate training prison for category B prisoners and a small local prison function. It holds up to 960 adult men. This inspection concerned only the training and local prison functions at the establishment as the TC is inspected separately. Dovegate opened in 2001. In September 2009, new accommodation opened to increase capacity, with half the 260 new spaces dedicated to local prisoners. The prison holds adult prisoners over the age of 21 serving a range of sentences including trial, remand, those awaiting sentence and convicted men serving short and long-term sentences.

4. HM Inspectorate of Prisons assesses adult prisons against four ‘healthy prison tests’ – safety, respect, purposeful activity and rehabilitation and release planning. There are four assessments – good (4), reasonably good (3), not sufficiently good (2) and poor (1). In 2017, Dovegate scored 2-3-2-2. In 2019 it scored 3-3-2-3.

5. Notable features from this inspection: Dovegate was an unusual category B training prison as it held a number of prisoners on remand and serving very short sentences; 70% of the population were serving sentences of 10 years or more and nearly a third were serving indeterminate sentences; three-quarters of the population were assessed as presenting either a high or very high risk of serious harm to others and half were convicted of violence as their main offence; 17% of those responding to our survey reported that they had an alcohol problem when they arrived at Dovegate compared to 9% in other category B training prisons; 73% of prisoners were under 40 years old; and 10% of prisoners were foreign nationals.
6. This unannounced inspection took place between 30 September and 11 October 2019.