Response to HM Chief Inspector of Prisons annual report

This week’s report from HM Inspectorate of Prisons is a damning indictment of a prison system on its knees. This is a system that is failing in its most basic duty, to keep people safe from harm. Efforts to rehabilitate and prepare prison-leavers for release have been struggling under the weight of decades of under-investment, overcrowding and poor long-term planning. This is a system at breaking point.

The 2023 – 2024 HMIP Annual Report offers an annual overview of the prison system through a lens of unannounced inspections, its findings draw on 79 inspection reports, including reports on 39 adult prisons.

For Nacro, there are four major take-aways from the report:

1. People are not being kept safe in prison

The report presents a system failing in its most basic form, to keep prisoners safe. Suicide and self-harm had increased considerably in some men’s prisons. And in some cases, self-harm had doubled in the prisons inspected. In 2023, self-inflicted deaths in adult men’s prisons rose by 27% to a total of 90. Drugs, debt, a lack of meaningful activity and inconsistent support from staff, were all cited as reasons for the increase in self-harm in prison.

The report also noted an increase in violence in prisons, with one of the major drivers being drug use. It is common to find through random drug testing more than 40% of inmates testing positive for drugs. This creates behavioural problems and gets in the way of efforts to rehabilitate people and plan for the future.

HM Inspectorate of Prisons stated: “Particularly worrying against this backdrop were gaps in mental health care provision with vulnerable men and women left seriously unwell in conditions that were likely to exacerbate rather than improve their health. The Inspectorate’s thematic review on delays to the transfer of acutely mentally unwell patients to secure hospitals, meanwhile, found fewer than 15% of patients were being transferred within 28 days, highlighting unacceptable suffering and irreversible harm to both prisoners and the prison staff caring for them in the meantime.”

2. Mental health support is not keeping up with demand

The report shows more people struggling with their mental health, this can, in part, be attributed to people being locked in their cells for long periods with less access to meaningful activities. The report highlights that in some prisons, people were locked up for 23 hours a day. Chronic understaffing issues in prison, also has a negative impact; meaning that there is less available support for people who need help with their mental health. This is an increasing issue and one we looked at in our report Mental Health in Prisons report.

3. Time in prison is wasted time, with people not being able to access training, employment and education

The report found almost all of the closed prisons they inspected were rated poor or insufficiently good in the inspectorate’s assessment of purposeful activity. Because of overcrowding and understaffing many people were locked in their cells with little access to education, training or employment. This was despite a real enthusiasm from people in prison to do something meaningful with their time. Nacro’s Wasting Time campaign is calling for better work opportunities in prison, to help increase the low numbers of former prisoners who are in work six months after release. Currently just 31% of people released from prison are in work six months after.

HM Chief Inspector of Prisons to the Justice Select Committee: "We still find workshops that are empty, classrooms with a handful of prisoners in them, and prisoners doing what are, ultimately, fake jobs. Someone might have a wing-cleaning job that takes them probably half an hour. Supposedly they are employed for the day, but they spend the rest of the time just hanging around the place. The idea that that is any preparation, particularly in cat C prisons, for that sense of progress… is really just fanciful."

4. Prisons aren’t giving people the building blocks to turn their lives around on release

The report also highlights longstanding issues that prisons are not adequately preparing people for release. The report specifically mentions seeing many people coming out of prison into homelessness, to then be recalled to prison. Nacro have long called for more housing to be available for people coming out of prison in an effort to break to the cycle of Cell-Street-Repeat.

What needs to happen now?

We know that overcrowding serves to exacerbate, if not solely cause many of the problems cited in this report. Whilst we wait to understand the impact of the early release scheme, it is clear that the Government must never return to this place of crisis again. Evidence-based plans to reduce the prison population in the long term must be put in place. These should include investing in more effective community sentences, reversing the planned increase in the prison population, and reinvesting in housing and resettlement support in the community to reduce reoffending. Whilst we know the Government face difficult choices in the upcoming budget, fixing our broken criminal justice system must be prioritised.

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