Maximum security prisons have 'fundamentally lost their way'

Two inspection reports into the Long Lartin and Whitemoor maximum security prisons plumb new lows.

Most weeks His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons publishes reports on the state of individual prisons across England and Wales. Since the pandemic, almost all of these inspections have been severely critical of the standard of care provided to people incarcerated. Chronic staff shortages are the main (but certainly not the only) reasons that there has been very marginal improvements in the extremely restricted regimes which were operated throughout the pandemic. Whilst almost every other area of society is functioning normally again, most prisons are still locking up most prisoners for all but a couple of hours per day.

These inspection reports are so uniform in their findings that we have become somewhat desensitised to them. Nevertheless, today’s two inspection reports into the Long Lartin and Whitemoor maximum security prisons plumb new lows.

The populations of high security prisons which hold people convicted of those most serious crimes tend to be more stable than those where prisoners are serving shorter sentences which generally allows for a much more reliable prison regime. Given that almost all prisoners are eventually released and return to live in the community, it is important that people receive support and are addressing the reasons behind their crimes via a range of interventions. Inspectors found that this was definitely not the case at either prison.

Findings

At HMP Long Lartin (a public sector prison near Evesham), the inspectors identified 15 key concerns including six highlighted as priorities:

1. The level of self-harm had doubled since the last inspection and was the highest among comparable prisons. Inspectors were particularly annoyed that there was no plan in place to reduce it.
2. Levels of violence were too high, especially against staff. The safety team was under-resourced, and work to address the causes of violence remained limited.
3. The prison’s infrastructure was in very poor condition and in need of investment. Many cells had no toilet or running water, and the heating, roofs, showers, kitchen equipment and some physical security systems were failing.
4. Prisoners spent too much time locked up and the regime was delivered inconsistently.
5. Provision of education, training and work was insufficient, and prisoners were not allocated to courses that met their needs.
6. Prisoners had insufficient contact with offender managers to support risk reduction and sentence progression.

Inspectors were similarly unimpressed by conditions at HMP Whitemoor (another public sector prison situated near March in Cambridgeshire) where they listed 12 key concerns, five of which they designated as priorities:

1. Limited interventions and a lack of purposeful activity made it difficult for prisoners to demonstrate a reduction in risk, and too few were able to progress in their sentence.
2. Much reduced time out of cell contributed to dirty conditions and limited prisoner access to health care, key work and offender management.
3. Leaders and managers had not established a predictable regime in which all prisoners consistently attended their allocated activity. Too often sessions were cancelled at short notice.
4. The curriculum did not meet the needs of all the prison population, particularly for vocational training.
5. Poor medicine administration had become established practice, despite contravening professional standards and being raised at previous inspections.

Conclusion

The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor was direct in his criticisms:

“Both Long Lartin and Whitemoor had fundamentally lost their way. Neither prison was fulfilling this function effectively and they were not even discharging their duty to maintain clean and decent facilities. Both prisons need to take urgent action to improve.”

Whitemoor was described as being the dirtiest prison the Chief Inspector had ever seen, with what appeared to be a blood stain uncleaned for several days of the inspection, serveries left uncleaned overnight and overflowing rubbish. At Long Lartin, the ageing facilities were failing: heating and often water didn’t work, roofs leaked, there were no in-cell toilets in older wings and men relied on buckets which they emptied out of their cell windows as they waited so long for them to be removed and cleaned and the smell became unbearable. Given how long men were held in their cells, inspectors labelled this situation “appalling”.

Unsurprisingly, both prisons were infested with rats.

While we have become accustomed to these sorts of problems in Victorian local prisons where the building itself is antiquated and part of the problem, it is shocking to find maximum security prisons which have fallen to such poor standards. As Mr Taylor says:

“Nobody should be held in the squalid conditions that we saw in these two prisons.”