A life of dependency

One of the consequences of imprisonment is that prisoners do not have the same freedom to complete day-to-day tasks and access services as they would have in the community. Their ability to get things done is almost entirely reliant on others. In the first instance, prisoners can try to resolve requests informally with officers. However, this is not always as straightforward as might be expected. A lack of access to technology, limited freedom to move around the jail to speak to those who may be able to resolve their queries and variable levels and quality of staff interaction, can mean that prisoners feel they must opt for more formal routes.

All prisons have a formal applications system that prisoners use to submit questions or queries that they would like to get resolved. Examples of applications are requesting additional toilet rolls for a cell, asking to make an appointment to speak to staff in another department and applying for specific courses or prison jobs.

Staff shortages

The report found that prison officers often failed to deal with prisoners’ requests informally with the main reason identified as under-staffing. shortage of available officers was a common problem in many of the prisons we inspected, which often meant much less time out of cell for prisoners due to the delivery of a restricted day-to-day regime. Where there were fewer officers on the wings, they were likely to be busier and had less time to assist with requests from prisoners. It also meant that key work, whereby prisoners are allocated a prison officer to guide, support, and coach them through their custodial sentence, was not being delivered as intended, closing off a key potential route for getting assistance with basic requests.

Even when officers were available, inspectors often reported that they congregated in offices, rather than making themselves available on the landings. This limited the opportunities for prisoners to ask for their assistance and had the potential to lead to perceptions that staff were not interested in helping.

At many prisons, officers working on the wings were new to the role, and during several inspections, including Wandsworth, Highpoint, Rochester and Woodhill, prisoners suggested that getting simple requests dealt with was difficult because officers lacked some basic knowledge and experience.

Prisoners also told inspectors that when officers were temporarily moved to a prison (increasingly common at the moment because of varying staffing levels across the prison estate), they often did not know the local procedures and did not have time to develop trusting relationships with prisoners.

Impoverished regimes

Limited time out of cell meant that prisoners were often forced to make choices between tasks such as showering, cleaning their cell, spending time in the open air or – where they were available – using wing-based application and information kiosks when they were unlocked.

However, when all of the prisoners on a wing were trying to complete the same tasks at the same time, it was no surprise that some struggled to access wing-based application and information kiosks during their time out of cell.

Unsurprisingly, inspectors found that in prisons with more time out of cell, prisoners were much more able to resolve day-to-day issues informally with staff and had less need to resort to the formal applications system.

Applications not working

Most prisons still had a paper based application system with forms such as health care applications meant to be readily available on the wing. However, inspectors found that forms were often not available and prisoners had to ask staff for them, undermining confidentiality. Prisoners were expected to detail their request on the form and hand it to staff. 

In many prisons, a tear-off receipt was meant to be given back to the prisoner but, in practice, this rarely happened, which meant the prisoner had no evidence of handing it in.

People with literacy or learning difficulties of those for whom English was not their first language faced particular problems in getting their basic needs met.

At one establishment with a population of more than 700, prison data suggested that only 2,409 applications had been submitted in 12 months, a figure so low as to be “scarcely believable”.

Technology

Several prisons made use of technology to support the applications process. The majority of these had wing-based kiosks that could be used by prisoners to carry out a range of day-to-day tasks such as checking their cash balances, making menu choices and submitting applications. While these systems worked well at some prisons (Oakwood & Nottingham, for example), at others kiosks were often offline, could only be used for some applications or were difficult to access for some prisoners.

Conclusion

Interestingly, the inspectorate’s surveys revealed that there was no significant difference in perception from prisoners using paper applications and those using electronic systems about whether the applications were dealt with fairly, which suggested that the use of technology had not addressed previous weaknesses in practice.

The report concludes:

“Ultimately the key variable in any application system is the way staff respond to prisoner requests. Whether electronic or paper-based, a system can only reflect the ability and willingness of staff to help prisoners resolve their issues. Too many leaders and staff are not prioritising the need for swift, clear and helpful responses, which can lead to unnecessary and potentially harmful frustration from prisoners.”

Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here