Prison
Cat C
Key Concerns Identified
Positive Findings
The Mount
IMB Annual Report 2021 · Published 21 July 2021
This report covers a year dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which HMP The Mount successfully contained the virus thanks to the commendable efforts of staff. However, severe restrictions on the regime meant prisoners spent significantly reduced time out of cells, impacting access to education, work, and family visits. Key concerns include mental health transfer delays, inadequate support for IPP prisoners, and delays in transfers to open conditions.
Positive Findings
The Board commends the Governor and staff for their intelligent and diligent work in controlling the Covid-19 pandemic and keeping prisoners safe, showing quiet courage. Managing prisoners in smaller groups led to reduced violence and increased staff confidence. In-cell phones and Purple Visits helped maintain family contact. The kitchen runs efficiently, and staff-prisoner relationships generally improved due to smaller group interactions. The Offender Management Unit is also noted as a strong and well-functioning team.
Key Concerns
Mental Health
Many prisoners have mental health problems and the delay in finding them accommodation in suitable mental health units in the community takes much too long. This has an unacceptable impact on their mental health and puts considerable strain on the officers who care for them without any special training.
Resettlement/Release
The Mount has 46 prisoners who are serving indeterminate sentences and is not set up to offer these prisoners the support they need to address the risk they pose to others and win release. In a sense they are just being warehoused at The Mount.
Estate/Conditions
Some investment has been made to improve the showers but more is still needed to bring them to an acceptable standard.
Healthcare
The transfer of responsibility for healthcare at The Mount caused significant disruption and a temporary decline in the quality of service. We hope that this decline will indeed be temporary. The Prison Service needs to review what lessons can be learned when evaluating tenders and planning for changes in healthcare providers.
Education/Purposeful Activity
Repeated
It will be important to provide sufficient number of workplaces for the prison’s population, providing workshops for the planned large foreign national population, ensuring spaces for those with any sort of disability, those on basic regime and high-risk prisoners and, importantly, providing cover for instructor absence
Estate/Conditions
Repeated
The rebuild of the reception area that was mentioned in last year's annual report has had to be postponed again due to lack of funding.
Resettlement/Release
prisoners will be leaving prison who have not been able to complete programmes that were on their sentence plans.
Resettlement/Release
as at the end of February 2021 there were roughly 80 prisoners at The Mount who had been re-categorised to D but who were still waiting for a place in an open prison to become available.
Board Commentary
Staffing
Staff showed quiet courage and diligence in managing the pandemic, with smaller groups improving confidence among newer officers. However, the safeguarding unit's operation is often impacted by staff redeployments. While CSU officers are patient and caring, they lack specific mental health training for complex cases. The key worker scheme, though previously working well, faced significant challenges during the pandemic, with recorded sessions far below projections, though 98% of prisoners have an allocated key worker. Healthcare services also experienced staff departures and reliance on agency staff due to the change in provider and the pandemic.
Healthcare
Healthcare services transitioned to Practice Plus Group (PPG) from October 2020, experiencing a difficult year with staff departures and reliance on agency staff, leading to a temporary decline in service quality. Despite this, general services were maintained at a satisfactory level, with improvements expected. Out-of-hours healthcare was unavailable. Face-to-face mental health consultations were challenging, though 80% of referrals were addressed this way for part of the year. The Board notes that healthcare, wellbeing, and dental services are comparable to those in the community.
Regime & Daily Life
The Covid-19 pandemic severely restricted the prison regime, resulting in prisoners spending extended periods locked in their cells, often only one to two hours out per day. This significantly limited access to exercise, association, education, work, offending behaviour programmes, and in-person social visits. The IMB acknowledges the need to progressively relax the regime to restore The Mount to a fully functioning Category C training prison with daily attendance at work and education.
Applications to the IMB
Prisoners can apply to their IMB about any aspect of their treatment. This table shows application counts by category.
| Category | Current | Previous | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accommodation (including transfers) | 45 | 38 | |
| Complaints (internal and external) | 25 | 20 | |
| Discipline and adjudications | 16 | 9 | |
| Diversity and equality | 5 | 4 | |
| Faith | 6 | 5 | |
| Family ties | 12 | 8 | |
| Finance | 20 | 12 | |
| Food | 10 | 7 | |
| Healthcare | 28 | 17 | |
| Other (not classified) | 44 | 35 | |
| Property | 55 | 43 | |
| Regime | 15 | 13 | |
| Security (including categorisation) | 18 | 11 | |
| Visits | 9 | 4 | |
| Work and education | 35 | 22 |
Recommendations (5)
Ministry of Justice: 2
HMPPS: 2
Governor / Director: 1
1 repeated
Recommendation 1
The MoJ’s statisticians should take this as an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of these programmes in stopping re-offending.
Ministry of Justice
Resettlement
Recommendation 2
The MoJ needs to consider how best to support these prisoners across the prison estate.
Ministry of Justice
Regime
Recommendation 3
Some investment has been made to improve the showers but more is still needed to bring them to an acceptable standard.
HMPPS
Estate
Recommendation 4
The Prison Service needs to review what lessons can be learned when evaluating tenders and planning for changes in healthcare providers.
HMPPS
Healthcare
Recommendation 5
Repeated
Prev. unaddressed
It will be important to provide sufficient number of workplaces for the prison’s population, providing workshops for the planned large foreign national population, ensuring spaces for those with any sort of disability, those on basic regime and high-risk prisoners and, importantly, providing cover for instructor absence.
Governor / Director
Purposeful Activity
Other IMB Reports for The Mount
HMIP Inspections
Recent inspections by HM Inspectorate of Prisons for this establishment.
11 Nov 2024
Unannounced
Safety: 3
Respect: 3
Activity: 1
Release: 3
PPO Fatal Incidents
Prisons and Probation Ombudsman fatal incident investigations for this establishment.
Prevention of Future Deaths Reports
Coroner PFD reports issued to this establishment.