The Prison Service prevented predicted large-scale deaths as a
result of COVID-19 but severe and prolonged daily lock-up of
prisoners harmed their physical and mental welfare, according to
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor.
Publishing his first annual report, for 2020–21, Mr Taylor warned
that some longstanding problems remained as daily regimes eased
in the post-COVID-19 period. These included not only violence,
drugs and self-harm but also inconsistency in delivering
purposeful activity and rehabilitation.
Mr Taylor’s report covers a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. HMI
Prisons was able to report on life in detention in this
unprecedented period, Mr Taylor said, “because we were
determined, in the early weeks of the pandemic, to find a safe
way to enter and inspect places of detention.
“As my predecessor (Peter Clarke) observed… last year, the
entrenched problems the Inspectorate had identified over recent
years did not disappear because of the pandemic. Violence, for
instance, may have been suppressed by locking people up for
almost all of the day, but its underlying causes have not gone
away and continuing severe lock-up cannot be the answer in a
post-COVID-19 world.
“It was understandably difficult for prisons to deliver full
programmes of education, training and rehabilitation during
COVID-19, but we have found poor outcomes in purposeful activity
and failures in rehabilitation and release planning for many
years, and the slow pace in some establishments in
re-establishing these services has exacerbated that issue.”
Variations in performance between ostensibly comparable
establishments – and the failure to learn from the better
performing establishments – “were clear to us during COVID-19,
and will undoubtedly continue...”. The report explains that HMI
Prisons has developed new expectations of leadership – at all
levels in prisons. Mr Taylor said: “There is no doubt that good
leaders are one of the most important factors in improving
prisons.”
Mr Taylor added: “There is a danger of learning the wrong lesson
from the pandemic by assuming that the solution to prison
violence is to isolate prisoners from each other, rather than to
make sure that when they are out of their cells, they are
well-managed by high-quality officers during association, and
given access to meaningful and productive education, training and
work.”
These are some of the key prisons-related findings in Mr Taylor’s
report:
- The Prison Service and ministers should be commended for
their initial swift action in preventing the sorts of outbreaks
that we have seen in other jurisdictions.
- Inspectors found that prisoners were initially grateful for
the steps taken to keep them safe. However, an HMI Prisons
thematic review – What happens to prisoners in a
pandemic? –showed that keeping the worst excesses of the
virus at bay was achieved at significant cost to the welfare and
progression of prisoners, most of whom have spent the pandemic
locked in their cells for 22.5 hours a day. Prisoners felt
drained, despondent, depleted, helpless and without hope.
Inspectors found that most mental health services had ceased
routine assessments or interventions and were focusing only on
urgent and acute care.
- Too many prisoners were locked up with too little to do
before the pandemic and the situation became much worse this
year, even in training prisons. Visits have recently restarted in
some establishments, but many prisoners have not seen family or
friends for over a year.
- Classroom-based education stopped in March 2020 and did not
restart in the summer, in most prisons when restrictions were
being lifted. Generic cell packs were developed, but some of
these did not arrive until months after the lockdown began. “The
idea that these packs are in any way a substitute for
high-quality face-to-face teaching is fanciful,” Mr Taylor said.
“The lack of access to offender management programmes, education,
resettlement planning and family visits meant that many prisoners
were released without some of the core building blocks that would
help them lead successful, crime-free lives.”
- While self-harm in male prisons had generally fallen, it
increased among women in prison, particularly in the early months
of the pandemic. Mr Taylor added: “Women’s lack of contact with
the outside world had led to extreme frustration and many had not
seen their children for many months.”
- When restrictions were introduced last March 2020, children
in custody were subjected to the same regime as adults, with a
big reduction in time out of cell and, with the notable exception
of Parc YOI, in South Wales, no face-to-face education.
In 2020–21, for the first time, HMI Prisons inspected Border
Force short-term holding facilities (STHFs) on a national basis.
The key finding was that there was inadequate leadership and
management of STHF detention under the Home Office. The
Inspectorate also inspected conditions for those arriving in
Dover on small boats and found “a general failure to plan for
what we considered to have been a predictable increase in
arrivals. Mr Taylor added: “The facilities at Tug Haven looked
more like a building site than a place to look after vulnerable
migrants.”
Notes to editors
- A copy of the report, published on 20 July 20210, can be
found here.
