HM Chief Inspector of Prisons has commended HMP Brixton for concerted and successful work to reduce drug use and violence, including a “bold” decision to stop release on temporary licence because this was being used to smuggle drugs in.
Peter Clarke said inspectors, who visited the 200-year-old prison in south London in March 2019, found “that with focused leadership, some bold decision-making and a highly committed staff group, much can be achieved even in the most challenging of circumstances.”
In January 2017, inspectors had assessed the prison as fundamentally unsafe, with the lowest judgement of ‘poor’ for both safety and purposeful activity. Respect was ‘not sufficiently good’ and resettlement was ‘reasonably good’.
By 2019, Brixton had many new staff and a cohort of prisoners that had changed in nature, including a larger number of sex offenders. Though the assessment of rehabilitation and release planning had fallen, other areas had improved.
“It is no exaggeration to say that… there has been a transformation in some key areas of the prison’s performance”, Mr Clarke said.
“The key to much of what has happened is, in my view, to be found in the determined, pragmatic and bold approach taken to dealing with the problem of illicit drugs which had been dominating prison life and driving very high levels of violence.” Two years ago, some 50 per cent of prisoners said it was easy to get hold of drugs. That figure has now reduced to 30 per cent.
This improvement had not come about by chance. Brixton had introduced the scanning of post for drug-impregnated paper, put up security netting and responded in a timely way to intelligence reports.
“In addition, the prison was faced with the question of how to respond to very clear intelligence that prisoners released on temporary licence were being pressurised to bring drugs back into the prison, usually concealed within their body and therefore undetectable by the technology available to the establishment.
“The decision was taken to stop the use of release on temporary licence (ROTL), and the evidence shows that this clearly had a huge impact on the availability of drugs.
“This was obviously a very serious step to take, and there was some concern that HM Inspectorate of Prisons would criticise the decision. On the contrary, my view is that this was precisely the type of bold, strategic decision that senior management needed to take.” He urged the prison, though, to keep the policy under review, to ensure it was proportionate.
The improvement in performance against illicit drugs had unsurprisingly been followed by a decrease in violence. “When one considers the overall trends in prisons in recent times, this was a remarkable achievement for a prison such as Brixton. The whole atmosphere within the prison had changed, and was far more relaxed and constructive than in the past,” Mr Clarke said.
“As an indication of how the staff were fully behind what had happened, we were told that in the space of two years, staff sickness levels had dropped from 25 per cent to 4.6 per cent.” Staff used force less often than in comparable prisons.
Inspectors, however, found that many challenges remained. Too many prisoners lived in overcrowded cells that were much too small. Many prisoners had a reasonable amount of time unlocked, but some had a very poor regime.
Ofsted inspectors judged that there had been significant improvement in the provision of education, skills and learning but there was still much to do. “It must become a priority to give sex offenders proper access to training and meaningful work, and access to interventions that can help them address their offending behaviour,” Mr Clarke said.
“It would be quite wrong if a perception were to be allowed to take hold that large numbers of sex offenders had been moved to Brixton to stabilise the prison (whether or not this was the case) and that the prison had then failed to meet their particular needs and risks.”
Overall, Mr Clarke said: “This was a heartening inspection of what has traditionally been a very difficult prison to run well… Brixton will always be a difficult prison to keep safe, decent and purposeful. My hope is that the progress of the past two years does not turn out to be a temporary blip, and that the improvements we saw can be sustained into the future.”
Commenting on the inspection report, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “There is much to praise in what has been achieved at Brixton by the Governor, staff and prisoners working together. But filling almost a third of the prison with men convicted of sexual offences was an expedient measure that did not have the best interest of those men at its heart. As intended, it will have contributed more than this report acknowledges to reductions in drug use and violence.
“The bottom line is that, like many other inner city prisons, Brixton risks being a resettlement prison in name only. A third of prisoners are being released with nowhere to live, and no-one is allowed out of the prison to work, learn, find a job or a home. Release on temporary licence is an essential tool for successful resettlement—keeping that tool locked away in the box is scarcely a matter for congratulation.”
* Read the inspection report here
* HM Inspectorate of Prisons https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/
* Prison Reform Trust http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/
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