Hm Prison Dartmoor

REPORT ON AN UNANNOUNCED FOLLOW-UP INSPECTION OF HM PRISON DARTMOOR 17 – 21 SEPTEMBER 2001 BY HM CHIEF INSPECTOR OF PRISONS 2 PREFACE The ability to carry out unannounced inspections of any prison, at any time, is one of the most important of the Inspectorate’s powers. This report shows its value. We discovered a prison which was itself imprisoned in its own past - locked into unsuitable but historic buildings and, more importantly, into an outdated culture of over-control and disrespect for prisoners. This preface, and much of the report that follows, focuses on that culture, as we believe that tackling it is fundamental to the future and development of the prison. It is to the credit of the new governor, the area manager and the Director-General that they share that view, and were beginning to address these problems before our arrival. We hope that this report will help produce the changes that they, and some of the staff we met, wish to see. It is, however, alarming that the long-standing and inappropriate practices we record here had not been effectively tackled before. Dartmoor is a lesson in how negative cultures can take hold, or re-establish themselves, if a prison does not have a positive vision, reinforced by strong management structures, both locally and centrally. This will not be a comfortable report for Dartmoor and its staff. In the light of what follows, it is important to make clear that there were pockets of good practice - on the vulnerable prisoners’ wings, in offending behaviour and drugs work, and in dealing with suicide and self-harm - which we commend. On all wings, there was evidence of a more positive culture struggling to get out, but lacking leadership and training, or a vision to replace the ‘old Dartmoor’ culture. However, the overwhelming impression, during our inspection, was of a lack of respect. This was pervasive. Many officers (even those in management roles) made it clear to us, and in audible conversation with each other, that they had no respect for management, either within the prison or the Prison Service. Nor did they feel that management had respected them, or communicated with them. The re-roling of Dartmoor, from Category B to Category C, was seen by many of the staff not as an 3 opportunity to develop a new, positive culture, but rather as a threat to them and the ‘hard’ prison they ran. But the main victims of the lack of respect were the prisoners. They were described directly to us as the ‘rubbish’ from the rest of the prison system, ‘these people’ or ‘coloureds’; or alternatively as people who were too dangerous to engage with. We saw few attempts to interact with prisoners as individuals on the main wings, and there was little eye contact between staff and prisoners during movement to work or exercise. We ourselves were frequently warned away from areas where prisoners might be moving, or advised against one to one contact with prisoners. It seemed to us that the notion of dangerousness was being used to justify non-interaction with prisoners, and to reinforce the prison’s ‘hard’ image. Ironically, given these views, up to 500 prisoners were allowed to exercise at one time, a number that we ourselves considered to be unsafe and potentially intimidatory for prisoners. Lack of respect was manifested in other ways. For example, when association was cancelled, as it was frequently, we observed that there was no attempt to explain this or forewarn prisoners, even though some of them would then spend at least two days locked for 23 hours in their cells. There was no integral sanitation on C wing; and indeed staff there defended this by saying that slopping out provided an opportunity for interaction with prisoners. The atmosphere within the prison was one of over-control, which could be perceived as intimidation: inspectors frequently reported back that prisoners had spoken to them hurriedly, saying that they did not want to be observed. The notion of dynamic security certainly did not seem to have reached Dartmoor. In such an environment, the culture and practices in a prison’s segregation unit become of great concern. Dartmoor has a large segregation unit (46 cells) in a forbidding granite-walled wing, described by the present governor as ‘medieval’. It is welcome that it is to be closed down and replaced with a much smaller, less fortress-like unit; but in the meantime it will continue to hold a significant number of prisoners. They are exercised one at a time in what all staff referred to as ‘pens’: 12 foot square granite- walled enclosures with rusty gates. At the time we were there, if they were distressed or suicidal and needed to see a Listener (a Samaritan-trained prisoner), or needed to 4 have other private interviews, they were locked in a ‘Listeners’ suite’, which was in fact a cage: a wire enclosure with a Perspex square through which they could communicate their problems. Both the pens and the cage were degrading, and more appropriate for dangerous animals than for potentially suicidal medium to low risk prisoners. When we reported our concerns about the cage, we were told that the Governor had instructed that it be closed some weeks previously. It was dismantled as we debriefed the prison’s senior management team. Use of the pens for exercise should also cease immediately. We had great concern that the physical environment of the segregation unit might also be reflected in the attitudes towards, and treatment of, those held there. We were told, by prisoners and the Board of Visitors, that the culture of the unit had begun to improve, but that more recently they feared a deterioration. Some of what we saw and were told reinforced that view. We were told that the unit contained the ‘shit’ from Dartmoor and other prisons; and the report records examples of similar or worse language reported to us by others. There was frequent use of control and restraint and special cells. We report an incident that took place during our inspection, where there may have been over-use of force in transferring a prisoner to the special cell. We did not find clear evidence to support this: but other prisoners in the Unit were clearly shaken and frightened the following morning and we ourselves observed that five prisoners in the Unit asked for Listeners during the night. There certainly did not appear to be proper systems in place to pick up warning signs. For example, the Governor’s instruction to close the cage had been ignored; the Board of Visitors regularly signed prisoners off to the next Board meeting; the log in the Unit did not record which prisoners had been seen, or for how long, during governors’ or Visitors’ visits; the CCTV cameras had a blind spot in part of the special cell to which prisoners under restraint were taken; and it was not clear that medical staff always had an opportunity for confidential access to prisoners. In the light of what is known to have taken place in segregation and closed units in other prisons, these management and monitoring systems need urgently to be addressed, in advance of any re-siting of the unit. 5 However, the issues of concern in relation to the segregation unit were symptoms of a much wider culture in the prison as a whole. The attitudes that we ourselves observed were reflected in responses to our survey of a random sample of prisoners. In all inspections, we ask whether they have ever been insulted, assaulted, or been victimised for racial or ethnic reasons, either by another prisoner, or by anyone other than a prisoner. In spite of Prison Service fears, response rates for abuse by non-prisoners are normally very low. In Dartmoor, however, on all three counts prisoners responded that they were much more likely to experience such treatment from someone other than a prisoner than from another prisoner. An astonishing 24%, nearly one in four, claimed to have been subjected to insulting remarks by a non-prisoner: the average for other Category B or C establishments where we have asked this question is 9%. 36% of prisoners felt unsafe some or most of the time; and, after the showers, were most likely to feel this ‘around officers’ or ‘everywhere’. 36% of prisoners also said that the thing they would most like to change in the prison was the attitude of staff. It is, however, necessary to emphasise that no prisoner we spoke to claimed that all officers shared these attitudes: indeed, some said that many did not. In our own observations, we saw some individual officers engaging positively with prisoners. We met many officers who felt under criticism, without any clear idea of how, or why, what they were doing was wrong. This is unsurprising, given the absence of any other clear purpose for the prison. In theory, it is a training prison. In practice, as we discovered, over half the prisoners at any one time were likely to be on the wings, many of them in their cells. Both the quantity and quality of training had deteriorated sharply, even since we criticised both in our 1997 inspection. Education provision was also inadequate, and the statistics disguised its under-use. Resettlement work and sentence planning caused us equal concern, and will need to improve dramatically as Dartmoor settles into a Category C role, from which prisoners can expect to be released directly. Given this vacuum, it is scarcely surprising that the only thing that many Dartmoor staff can take pride in is their reputation as a tough prison.

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