Farmer Review (Men)

There should be a clear and simple structure for accountability as regards prisoners' contact and relationships with their family: • The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice to be made responsible for ensuring prisoners' family ties are consistently treated as important across the estate by including them in his accountabilities. • The importance of 'Maintaining and developing family relationships' must be explicitly stated as part of the purpose of prison, to protect the agenda from being de-prioritised or dropped under future governments. • It should also be explicitly specified that the Performance Agreements the Secretary of State enters into with governors and executive governors of prison clusters must include a 'local family offer' to ensure that effective family work is delivered inside prisons. • The Performance Agreement with each prison should specify the following local family offer elements (with guidance from the Ministry of Justice) but detailed design and delivery to be at the broad discretion of governors in each establishment: (a) Visitor base/centre and visiting services; (b) Staffing structure to ensure family work is an operational priority; (c) Extended visits; (d) Family learning; (e) 'Gateway' communication system.

Empowered governors' tenures should be of sufficient duration to demonstrate that they have added value to the prison: as Performance Agreements last for three years this should be the minimum length (apart from in exceptional circumstances).

When governors are in the process of making a decision about granting ROTL, family ties and supportive relationships should be one of the considerations. Men who are eligible for ROTL should be able to attend visits outside the prison gate, whether on approved premises or in the wider community.

Governors should be intentional about ensuring all prisoners who do not have family or other support – for example if they have been in the care system – are helped to form relationships with people outside or peers inside. To support them in this, the body that considers 'what works' to rehabilitate offenders should examine the effectiveness of models that help prisoners without supportive relationships to develop these or to reconnect safely with family and others from their past.

The Ministry of Justice should make a fund available that governors can bid for to trial innovations that engage with families specifically in order to prevent suicide.

As part of their Performance Agreement each prison should establish a clear, auditable and responsive 'gateway' communication system for families and significant others: a dedicated phone line that is listened to and acted upon. • Families' concerns about mental and physical health should be systematically recorded and action taken. • Families (and significant others) should be properly informed about and able to request the opening of an Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) document: – If after completion of a risk-based assessment an ACCT document is opened they should be kept appropriately updated of any intervention/action arising from this. – If after completion of a risk-based assessment it is decided not to open an ACCT document, then the family member or other person who raised the matter should be written to detailing the reason for the decision.

Development of leaders and staff must support governors in fulfilling their Performance Agreement requirement to provide a staffing structure that makes family work an operational priority: • Given that family work has been characterised by unacceptable levels of inconsistency across the estate, the leadership capability strategy referred to in the white paper should make this area of responsibility a priority. • The new leadership programme should give governors a solid grasp of the impressive evidence base that shows good relationships with families and others are key to rehabilitation and reducing intergenerational reoffending. • Personal officer job descriptions must include developing personal relationships with their prisoners and their training must reverse the de-skilling that has prevented many from undertaking informal support for prisoners' family ties. – As a quarter of prisoners were formerly in the care of the local authority, personal officer training must also include awareness of how to help them with the psychological and other issues care-experienced men often face. These can affect their ability to form the relationships that will help them to desist from offending and settle back into the community after their sentence.

All new-build prisons should be subject to the Government's Family Test and required to produce a family impact assessment, which should be published.

Consideration should be given to the closeness of family or other supportive relationships as part of any proposed movements of prisoners out of their home region. • Governors should arrange, in collaboration with HMPPS Population Management Unit, to ensure prisoners moved out of area are repatriated at the earliest opportunity to the prison region of their family and wider community (if beneficial to the successful completion of their individual sentence plan). • As part of any decision concerning prison re-rolling, governors in collaboration with HMPP, should be required to produce a family impact assessment that considers the proximity of prisoners to their families or other supportive relationships. This should also be published.

The MoJ should require prisons to demonstrate mutually beneficial links with local businesses, schools and other bodies in the wider community.

Virtual visits (using video calling technology) should be available for the small percentage of families or individual family members who cannot visit frequently or at all due to infirmity, distance or other factors

Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons must ensure that the importance of family ties features prominently throughout the new Expectations currently being refined, so empowered governors know this has to be a cross-cutting priority in the running of their prison.

To improve the use of evidence and data the body that considers 'what works' to rehabilitate offenders and should also act as a repository of information about effective family work.

Ministry of Justice should ensure the importance of family ties is a golden thread running through the new policy frameworks based on the revised and pruned body of Prison Service Orders and Prison Service Instructions and also Probation Instructions.

Ministry of Justice to develop an action plan out of the Farmer Review recommendations including details on how the proposals will be taken forward, and report progress to the Review twice a year.

Governors to be held to account for positive family work outcomes, in the same way as they are responsible for ensuring prisoners' education and employment training is fit for purpose.

Family work should be included in all four standards in the white paper. Standard 1: Public protection — Policy frameworks should require evidence of the involvement of families or other supportive relationships in sentence planning, resettlement planning and decisions regarding the use of ROTL. Standard 2: Safety and order — Prisons should be able to show evidence that family or other supportive relationships play a role in intelligence gathering regarding a prisoner's mental health, drug use (prescription and illicit), propensity to violence and risk to self. Standard 3: Reform — Given their role in prisoner rehabilitation, a standardised visitors' survey should be developed to capture the experiences of families as they seek to maintain contact and to enable comparison between different establishments. Standard 4: Preparing for life after prison — Prisons should be able to show how many prisoners do not receive visits.

Prison performance measures, which would enable comparisons to be made with similar prisons for the purposes of learning from practice, should include a family-related measure such as rate of prisoners who receive visits on entry and exit and rate of prisoners engaged with their family, or other supportive relationships, on entry and exit.

Contact details of family and significant others should be mandatorily requested by prisoner escort services before a prisoner leaves court and immediately added to his prison file, with this and other information on key relationships updated on an ongoing basis and sent with him when he moves establishments. If a prisoner cannot name anyone he will want to contact on the first night this should be flagged and active steps taken to try to reconnect him with family or others with whom he might be able to develop a supportive relationship.