Prison healthcare best practice

The Prison Service should prepare a readable guide, which explains the circumstances in which personal information about a prisoner should be disclosed by healthcare staff to officers on the wing. The guide should contain practical examples of situations where disclosure should or should not be made.

The Prison Service should retain the present practice of not asking new prisoners at reception or in the first night centre or during induction whether they would prefer to be in a cell on their own or to share a cell with another prisoner.

The first reception health screen questionnaire should be revised so as to trigger a referral to a mental health professional on the healthcare team even if the prisoner has only self-harmed in prison. A referral should also be triggered where the prisoner’s behaviour is such that the healthcare officer completing the questionnaire considers it desirable.

The measures which should be taken to minimise the risk which a mentally disordered prisoner on ordinary location poses to staff and other inmates includes: • not placing such a prisoner in a shared cell • if such a prisoner is to share a cell, carefully selecting their cellmate • ensuring that, whatever difficulties there may be in...

A comprehensive review of the quality of care provided to prisoners with mental health problems and its effectiveness should be conducted once the changes introduced since Zahid’s murder have had a chance to work.

The risk management model for the management of prisoners to whom MAPPA applies and who have been identified as posing the greatest risk to the public should be adopted by all establishments. Prisoners who have been identified as being a high risk to their cellmate on any review of the cell-sharing risk assessment, or posing a very high...

The first review of the initial assessment should take place within one week of the initial assessment, and should take place in every case. It should be a multi-disciplinary review, with representatives from the prisoner’s wing, healthcare and the team responsible for implementing the establishment’s violence reduction strategy all contributing to it. The documents set out in paragraph...

All adult prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months’ imprisonment who had an OASys assessment before being sentenced should have that assessment reviewed during the induction process. The review need only address the risk of harm which the prisoner poses to staff and other inmates. If resources permit, adult prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months’...

Subject to recommendation 7, the rule that an unconvicted prisoner should not be required to share a cell with a convicted prisoner should always be complied with.

When prisoners are referred for a mental health assessment, the assessment should address the risk which they pose to staff and other inmates.

The sole exception to that rule – namely when the unconvicted prisoner consents to share a cell with a convicted prisoner – should be regarded as applying only when the unconvicted prisoner consents to share a cell with a particular convicted prisoner, not with convicted prisoners in general.