Concerns for prisoner safety at HMP Lowdham Grange

Drugs were a continuing problem, both affecting prisoner behaviour and encouraging illicit activity and debt

Safety is a serious concern at HMP Lowdham Grange, for the second year running, with three apparently self-inflicted deaths in three weeks, says the independent monitoring board (IMB) in a report published last week. The IMB took the unusual step of publishing an annex to its 2022-3 report, alerting ministers to its concerns following the change of management of the prison. As regular readers will know it is a legal requirement for every prison to be monitored by an independent board appointed by the Secretary of State from members of the community in which the prison is situated. Under the National Monitoring Framework agreed with ministers, the Independent Monitoring Board is required to:

• satisfy itself as to the humane and just treatment of those held in custody within its prison and the range and adequacy of the programmes preparing them for release
• inform promptly the Secretary of State, or any official to whom authority has been delegated as it judges appropriate, any concern it has
• report annually to the Secretary of State on how well the prison has met the standards and requirements placed on it and what impact these have on those in its custody.

To enable the Board to carry out these duties effectively, its members have right of access to every prisoner and every part of the prison and also to the prison’s records.

HMP Lowdham Grange

Lowdham Grange is a category B training prison in Nottinghamshire. Opened in 1998 on the site of an older institution, the prison is operated by the private contractor Sodexo who took over the running of the prison from another private operator, Serco, in February of this year. The prison’s campus comprises five house blocks, made up of 14 separate residential wings. Most of those held in the prison are serving very long sentences for serious offences. At the last prison inspectorate visit in 2018, some 60% of men, for example, were serving sentences of 10 years or more and a further third were serving indeterminate sentences, mostly life. During the last year the population in the establishment averaged 860 prisoners, even though the prison has a certified normal accommodation of 894 and an operational capacity of 888. Prisoner numbers were reduced from June 2022 to January 2023 to accommodate the end of contract dilapidation works identified during the end of contract survey. These refurbishment works needed to be completed by February 2023 and they affected almost all structures and services in the prison. Extensive areas required scaffolding and large numbers of external contractors were on site every day for over eight months, affecting the safety and security of the site. The complexities of managing these works projects had a negative impact on the regime. For example, they affected the availability of out-of-cell activities and the amount of time that prisoners could access the exercise yards.

The report

In its annual report, covering the period before the change of management, the Independent Monitoring Board for HMP Lowdham Grange highlighted a number of key concerns:

• For the second year running safety at the prison had deteriorated.
• Drugs were a continuing problem, both affecting prisoner behaviour and encouraging illicit activity and debt.
• Significant numbers of improvised weapons were discovered.
• Staff shortages impacted on meaningful activities and adversely affected relationships between prisoners and staff.
• Though some prisoners were released directly from the prison, there is no specialist rehabilitation and resettlement resource.

The annex to the report, covering the period after the change of management, notes that:

• There were three deaths, within three weeks of the change of management, which are under investigation by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.
• More staff than anticipated left at the time of the handover. Staff were brought in from other prisons, but none were from high security category B prisons.
• Serious concerns about the quality of healthcare, raised in an inquest into a previous death in custody, had increased because of staff shortages, and the withdrawal of night-time nursing cover.

The Chair of the Lowdham Grange IMB made their concerns clear:

“The deteriorating situation at Lowdham Grange has caused significant concern to the Board. These concerns were compounded by shortages of both prison and healthcare staff. Prisoners are also directly released without specialist rehabilitation and resettlement involvement. Despite this catalogue of difficulties, the prison has been told to prepare to take an extra twenty prisoners, some of whom will have to share cells for the first time”.