Wayland

Low levels of personal safety and a significant decline in interpersonal trust among prisoners, with 50% trusting no other prisoner.

Persistent and widespread issues with basic decency standards in cells, including cleanliness on arrival, availability of cleaning materials, condition of furniture, and weekly bedding changes.

Poor and inconsistent staff-prisoner relationships, marked by dismissive behaviour, a ‘them vs us’ culture, lack of respect, and limited time for meaningful interaction, further exacerbated by a perception of low-experienced staff.

Deterioration in healthcare access, with appointment ease returning to previous low levels, and issues with the quality of responses to healthcare complaints, including staff attitudes and medication management.

A restrictive and depressing regime with limited time out of cell, frequent cancellation of association due to staff shortages, and infrastructure failures impacting food provision.

High levels of loneliness among prisoners (61%), with only a quarter of those confiding in staff receiving help.

A significant drop in family and friend visits (to 43%), primarily due to distance, highlighting challenges in maintaining external relationships.

Recommendation 1

The Board recommends that there is in consequence the opportunity to develop a ‘new prisoner training program’ to help such prisoners craft and navigate their way into and through their new experience before the challenges appear in a less protected environment in their allocated units.

Governor / Director Induction

Recommendation 2

We make a similar observation about the needs of the more experienced, those who think they have ‘seen it all before’. This group, the majority, could benefit from a program which makes it clear to them that the prison will challenge unacceptable behaviour but will also offer tangible improvements over their potential expectations and help them on a better path to their progression and resettlement than they may have experienced previously. The Board would so recommend.

Governor / Director Induction

Recommendation 3 Repeated Prev. unaddressed

We therefore make a similar recommendation this year as we have done in previous years; that more focused staff training is needed for all staff. We would now add to that general call that this should especially be for those in the new induction unit. Staff of this unit should not believe that they can solve all the problems that receptions present, but they should be able to understand the importance of identifying needs, at least starting the signposting of the most appropriate staff for ongoing involvement, and preparing key-working staff so they these latter staff can hit the ground running with their new clients. This could all be part of a formalised induction plan with, importantly, a copy provided for the prisoner. We would hope that senior staff consider how these observations could best be responded to, thus ensuring the value of the new induction programme and enlist the willing involvement of new prisoners in their sentence planning and progression.

Governor / Director Staffing

Recommendation 4 Repeated Prev. unaddressed

Throughout the years of our surveys a significant number of respondents have been willing to say that they have indeed felt lonely in Wayland. The IMB would, therefore, ask if staff are aware of how lonely many prisoners are. Of course, the loneliness quotient may ebb and flow in any one person, but surely it must be a component of mental well, or ill, being, and, if so, are staff trained to look for the signs of loneliness, and perhaps sensitively question prisoners about their current social life? Are there strategies to address this problem through, perhaps, interest groups across unit boundaries, and is loneliness associated with a lack of literacy and how should that be addressed through education and or the Shannon Trust? The IMB suspects that this important contingent of a prisoner’s social life, and therefore his social health, is not given the attention it needs and would recommend that prison management review the issue to examine other prisons’ experiences and, possibly, knowledge of how to address this issue successfully.’ We so recommend again this year in 2025.

Governor / Director Mental Health

Recommendation 5

It might also be helpful if some training could be devised for operational staff to give them greater confidence in discussing this issue, say, within their key-working responsibilities. The Board would so recommend.

Governor / Director Staff Training

Recommendation 6

The only recommendation which the Board believes it can make in response to these results is to ask senior and operational management to take note of them, and look for ways of rebuilding a sense of community amongst all prisoners in decision-making arenas where and when managerial impacts on the community are under review.

Governor / Director Safety

Recommendation 7

This situation does give extra weight to proposals that either give longer for visits or additional facilities such as remote visiting. The Board would encourage such further initiatives.

Governor / Director Resettlement

Recommendation 8

The contact metrics are definitely moving in the right direction, an excellent basis on which to build a staff training programme which will build confidence in staff’s skills to manage the sessions, and benefit prisoners by increasing their meaningfulness to their own particular case. We so urge prison management to do.

Governor / Director Staff Training

Recommendation 9

The Board would encourage the healthcare contractor, Practice Plus, to consider these findings, perhaps carry out their own assessments of the situation, and take such action as required to at least return these metrics onto an improving path.

NHS / Healthcare Provider Healthcare

Recommendation 10

The Board would like to suggest that Practice Plus seriously consider running a survey of their own amongst prisoners to test for themselves the themes we have bulleted above, and also, as a response to the themes we have identified, to consider providing a clear confirmation of the diagnosis made and treatment to be provided after a consultation so the prisoner has something tangible to review and not just his memory of what the consultation concluded and why.

NHS / Healthcare Provider Healthcare

Recommendation 11 Repeated Prev. unaddressed

is to create a clearer, and firmer, standard by which a cell is declared ‘clean’, before occupation, including accurate statements of the quantity and quality of furniture provided, adequate time for staff to make the assessment and for the new occupant to agree its correctness, and, where there is a deficiency of cleanliness or equipment, a date or time by which it will be put right. The Board further believes there should be a tighter standard for those cells which are shared under the current requirement for doubled occupation of single cells.

Governor / Director Estate

Recommendation 12

At the very least we would suggest that the Prison Service set a victualling allowance at the start of each year, and then arrange that this be automatically increased on a monthly basis as required by food cost inflation data. At least that would allow some degree of predictability in menu planning and delivery.

HMPPS Food