UK: No change at unstable HMP Rye Hill
01 October 2007
This was the Inspectorate's third inspection of HMP Rye Hill, a contracted-out Category B prison, run by Global Solutions Ltd (GSL), that opened in January 2001. In 2005, the Inspectorate reported that Rye Hill was "an unstable environment, both for prisoners and staff." The main recommendations at that point were that the Office for Contracted Prisons should take urgent action to reinforce staff and management and should review staff recruitment, retention, deployment and management, including risk assessment of safe staffing levels.
In 2007, as Chief Inspector Ann Owers put it, "many of the passages of the 2005 report could be repeated verbatim." Staff lacked the experience or support to ensure that proper boundaries were in place, take decisive action to challenge misbehaviour, or actively support prisoners. The fundamental changes needed to ensure safety, decency and good practice had not been made. At the time of the first inspection, only 17% of prisoners reported ever feeling unsafe. By 2007 that number had risen to 52%, with 26% feeling unsafe at that moment. The Inspectorate found inexperienced, often young, staff, at most in pairs, and too often actually or effectively on their own, unable to set boundaries, engage positively with prisoners, respond to their requests and concerns, or carry out agreed procedures. Aggressive behaviour was rewarded, in that it attracted staff attention. The incentives scheme had been subverted. Prisoners who refused to engage with the regime, and many of those who were in segregation, were on enhanced or super-enhanced levels. Use of force and adjudications were over-used.
There was a lack of robust management to support staff. Management of race relations, foreign nationals and disability fell well below best practice, and in some cases below the current legal minimum. Suicide and self-harm procedures were poor. Food was of poor quality. Healthcare provided only a basic service, without proper chronic disease management, and with inadequate pharmacy services and poor links to external NHS facilities. Activity was seriously inadequate for a training prison. Over a third of prisoners at any one time were not engaged in any activity, and classroom efficiency was measured by whether the teacher, rather than the prisoners, turned up. There was no coherent resettlement strategy. The prison had a large number of high risk offenders, ran offending behaviour programmes, and was the regional centre for sex offenders serving indeterminate sentences, but had no forensic psychologist on site.
The Inspectorate found that Rye Hill performed so poorly and was so unsafe an environment for staff and prisoners "that the National Offender Management Service should consider sending in a team of experienced public sector senior and middle managers for a period to assist the Director to stabilise the prison."
Report on a full unannounced inspection of HMP Rye Hill, 11-15 June 2007" HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (2007)
http;//inspectorates.homeoffice.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspect_reports/hmp-yoi-inspections.html/Rye-Hill.pdf?view=binary