02/02/2023
Police Oracle
Inspectors gave Eastwood Park prison the lowest rating for safety which is very unusual for a women’s establishment.
Today’s inspection report into the Eastwood Park prison/young offender institution for women makes for horrific reading. Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, was blunt in his summary of the report:
“Some of the most vulnerable women across the prison estate were held in an environment wholly unsuitable for their therapeutic needs. The levels of distress we observed were appalling. No prisoner should be held in such terrible conditions.”
Eastwood Park
Eastwood Park, in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire opened as a women’s prison in March 1996. It has ten residential units including Houseblock 4 for women needing constant supervision, segregation or a transfer under the Mental health Act, Houseblock 9 which is a mother and baby unit and Houseblock 10, the Nexus Unit for women with personality disorders. The prison has an operational capacity of 377 and held 348 women at the time of the inspection visit in October 2022.
The inspection
The prison inspectorate examines each prison under four key areas: safety; respect; purposeful activity and rehabilitation & release planning.
Safety
Inspectors rated Eastwood Park poor (the lowest rating) for safety; very unusual for a women’s establishment. There had been two self-inflicted deaths in the three years since the inspectorate’s previous visit in 2019. Alarmingly, the rate of self-harm had risen by 128% since then and had increased dramatically over the previous year.
Staff told inspectors they were overwhelmed by the number of assessment, care in custody and teamwork (ACCT) case management documents for prisoners at risk of suicide or self-harm they were dealing with. Inspectors found that the standard of documents was poor and many women did not feel well cared for or supported.
The prison did not have the facilities or medical expertise to meet the needs of women who were very mentally unwell. Some were in unit 4, (for those needing constant supervision, segregation or a transfer to a mental health facility) where living conditions had been allowed to deteriorate and were described by inspectors as “appalling”. Cells were grubby, poorly furnished and contained a lot of graffiti. Inspectors saw an empty cell that was ready to be occupied, which had blood on the toilet wall. A woman had been located in another cell, where the damage to the walls and back of the cell door reflected the distress and trauma of its previous resident. Inspectors said that the unit was no longer the therapeutic facility it was supposed to be.
72% women surveyed by the inspectors said staff treated them respectfully, significantly lower than in 2019 (87%). Some women described feeling threatened or intimidated by staff, with more than a quarter saying they had experienced these problems.
Inspectors also noted that staff shortages meant that hardly any officer key worker sessions were taking place.
Respect
Inspectors did rate Eastwood Park as “reasonably good” (the second highest rating) in terms of respect. Substance misuse services were rated as good but healthcare, despite being “very well led” was hampered by staff shortages and many patients waited too long to be transferred to mental health inpatient units where their needs could be better met.
Purposeful activity
Inspectors rated this area of activity as “not sufficiently good”. During the inspection, 62% of women were allocated to purposeful activity, which should have provided them with a reasonable amount of time out of cell, but staff shortages often led to curtailments and cancellations. Almost a quarter (24%) women were locked up during the working day and those who were out were locked back up in their cells by 5pm every day.
Neither education nor employment services were considered of sufficient quality.
Rehabilitation and release planning
Inspectors rated the prison “reasonably good” in their final area of activity. Offender management and resettlement services were found to have improved since the previous inspection but there was too little help for women on remand.
Again, while inspectors praised the work of prison offender managers, they noted that there was no strategy for managing women serving long or indeterminate sentences.
Conclusion
The inspectors did note some pockets of excellent work at Eastwood Park, such as the Nexus unit, which offered specialist support for women with personality disorders. However, they said that the jail was failing in its most basic duty – to keep the women safe – and called for “immediate and meaningful change”.