Category: Safety

Charities welcome minister’s commitment to deliver emergency safeguarding hotlines

This week the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody held its Keeping Safe Conference conference in London. Speaking at the event, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland, highlighted the importance of family members and loved ones being able to share urgent safeguarding concerns they might have for someone currently in prison.

“Most importantly, families must be able to make contact to raise a concern over safety at any time. We are working hard with all prisons in the estate to ensure that there is a well-advertised and reliable means of speaking to a member of staff – such as a duty governor or orderly officer – where there is an imminent risk, as well as a separate voice mail service for less urgent matters where calls are monitored regularly and, yes, followed up.”

The minister’s statement is welcome, and echoes the findings of our joint report published with PACT (the Prison Advice and Care Trust) and Inquest which found that the provision of safer custody phone lines is patchy, under-resourced and even non-existent in some prisons, leaving families struggling to share their concerns with prison staff.

Responding to the remarks, Peter Dawson, Director of the Prison Reform Trust and Andy Keen-Downs, Chief Executive of Pact said:

“It is good to see the Lord Chancellor giving a personal commitment to reduce the number of people who die in prison, and describing some of the practical steps that can help that to come about. He rightly identifies the crucial role of families, on which he already has a comprehensive road map for reform thanks to Lord Farmer’s 2019 report. We particularly welcome Robert Buckland’s promise to make sure families can easily speak to someone with authority in a prison when they have an urgent concern about the safety of a loved one. But we have been here before, and words don’t always turn into actions. Our joint report ‘Keeping people safe in prison’ showed that this Farmer recommendation was a very long way from being implemented. There have been improvements since, but we know that not every prison yet delivers this very basic service. We will keep checking until they do.”

PRT comment: Safety in custody statistics

Commenting on the findings of today’s (30 January) Ministry of Justice Safety in Custody statistics, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust said:

“We welcome the small decrease in the overall levels of assault and significant drop in serious assaults on staff. But the hidden crisis revealed in these figures is the record levels of self-harm, which continue to rise unabated. A failure to ensure decent and humane conditions, as well as respond effectively to the large proportion of people in prison with serious mental health problems, is being paid for in human misery and distress. Too many people are held in overcrowded conditions with too little to do. The government needs a plan to restore purpose and hope to our prisons. Sending more people to prison for longer will make matters worse.”

Families struggling to share urgent safeguarding concerns with prisons

New research reveals that most prisons in England and Wales are failing in their duty to ensure that emergency phone lines are in place for families to share urgent concerns about self-harm and suicide risks of relatives in prison. This is in serious breach of government policy that families should be able to share concerns ‘without delay’.

At a time of unprecedented levels of self-harm in prisons, charities are calling on prisons to protect the lives of people in prison and address these critical failures. In 12 months to March 2019 there were 58,000 self-harm incidents in prisons – compared to 26,000 a decade earlier. The latest government safety in custody statistics will be published later on today [31 October].

A joint report by the Prison Reform Trust, INQUEST and Pact (the Prison Advice and Care Trust), maps the provision of safer custody telephone lines across the prison estate – dedicated phone lines which enable family members and others to pass on urgent information when they have concerns.

It finds that provision is patchy, under-resourced and even non-existent in some prisons, leaving families struggling to share their concerns with prison staff. The report reveals that:

Almost two in five (37%) prisons in England and Wales appeared to have no functioning dedicated safer custody telephone lines for families to get in touch.

Of these, nearly one in five prisons (18%) had no publicly advertised number for a dedicated safer custody telephone line.

A further 18% of prisons advertised a dedicated line, but when called the number either wasn’t operational, was not answered, or went through to a general prison switchboard.

Of the 75 dedicated safer custody telephone lines that went through to safer custody departments, only 13 (17%) were answered by a member of staff.

Over 80% of dedicated safer custody lines that went through to safer custody departments (62 prisons in total) put the caller straight through to an answer machine.

The safety and wellbeing of prisoners is put at risk when families and friends are unable to share urgent safeguarding information with the prison. Lord Farmer’s independent review on strengthening family ties recommended that all prisons should establish a gateway communication system for families to relay urgent safety concerns. Prison policy now requires establishments to have a means for families to get in touch “without delay” when they have concerns they need to pass on. This report shows that policy is not being put into practice.

The issue came to public attention earlier this year when HM Inspectorate of Prisons reported on conditions at HMP Bristol. It found that “…a hotline for the family and friends of those in crisis, to call and report their concerns, had not been checked by staff at all for the two weeks before the inspection.”

The findings of the report suggest that the problems uncovered by inspectors at HMP Bristol may be commonplace. Of the 62 dedicated safer custody lines which put the caller through to an answer machine:

36 (57%) provided no alternative number or signposting should the caller have an urgent safeguarding concern or was calling outside of office hours.

4 answer machines had no recorded message from the prison.

Only 23 (36%) of the answer machine messages informed the caller how regularly messages were checked. Where they did provide information, this varied from ‘every morning’ to ‘daily during weekday office hours’ to ‘twice a day’.

Only 13 (20%) of the answer machine messages said that they would call the caller back. One message stated that ‘we may not be able to call you back due to data protection’.

Data from the services for prisoners and their families provided by Pact and the Prison Reform Trust add to the evidence that many prisons are failing to ensure that families are able to get in touch when they have concerns (see notes below). The authors of the report also spoke to family members about the difficulties they had experienced in attempting to share safer custody concerns with prisons.

One family member said:

“I have probably contacted the safer custody line about 20-25 times between January and June this year. About 40% of the time someone picks up and says that they will check on him and then ring me back…but they have never rung me back.

“On one occasion I left a message 4 times before they rang me back. You have to push it to the nth degree. It’s only when you take it to ‘threat to life’ do they return your call.

“The Chaplaincy never rang me back and I left a message over and over.”

The past few years have seen a significant deterioration in safety in prisons. The latest Ministry of Justice Safety in Custody statistics show that self-harm incidents reached a ‘new record high’ (57,968 incidents in the 12 months to March 2019), as did prisoner on prisoner assaults; and cases of self-inflicted deaths continue to rise with a total of 86 deaths in the 12 months to June 2019.

Poor arrangements for families to get in touch with prisons have been identified in inquests into the deaths of prisoners. In June 2019, the inquest into the death by natural causes of Jordan Hullock, aged 19, at HMP Doncaster heard evidence that “when Jordan stopped communicating, his mother emailed and phoned the prison with her concerns, but to no avail.” Although his mother had contacted the prison on numerous occasions prior to and when Jordan had been hospitalised, she was not told where he was until the following day when he had already been placed in an induced coma.

Commenting, Peter Dawson, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“It doesn’t take much imagination to understand the anguish of a family member trying to tell a prison that their loved one inside is at immediate risk but not being able to do so. Lord Farmer’s report demanded action, and the Prison Service promised it. But this report shows that the problem is a very long way from being solved. Lives may depend on the ability to get an urgent message through – every prison should have a system in place and be testing it regularly.”

Andy Keen-Downs, Chief Executive of Pact, said:

“As the charity for prisoners’ families, we urge the Government to recognise this is unfinished business in terms of its public commitment to implement Lord Farmer’s recommendations. We invite the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS to work with us as a priority to develop consistent and properly resourced safer custody hotlines and procedures for all prisons.”

Deborah Coles, Director of INQUEST, said:

“The ability of a family to contact prisons to raise concerns about their relative can be the difference between life and death. Many bereaved people INQUEST works with report difficulty in passing vital information about their relative’s health and wellbeing, sometimes with devastating consequences.

“These concerns are not new. We hope that the recommendations of this new report are implemented and do not gather dust. Families have key role to play in safeguarding the lives of prisoners, something prisons should welcome. Greater engagement with families can save lives and could go some way to turning around the disturbing levels of self-harm and preventable deaths in custody.”

Click here to download a copy of the report.

Photo credit: Andy Aitchison

PRT comment: Safety in custody statistics

Commenting on the latest safety in custody statistics published today by the Ministry of Justice, Peter Dawson, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“The faint hope that our prison system might have turned a corner has been dashed by these numbers. Prisons are still getting more dangerous as places where people have to live and work. More people than last year chose to take their own life rather than endure it. When an individual prison hits rock bottom, the government reduces the number of prisoners it holds – but it continues to ignore the obvious truth that it is the prison system as a whole that is grossly overcrowded. Ministers talk about having recruited more staff, but the problem will only be solved by having fewer prisoners.”

The figures show:

An increase in total assaults over the last year which rose by 11%, 4% of which was over the last quarter. The total number of assaults over the past year is the highest ever recorded
The number of serious assaults were at their highest ever recorded rate with 1,000 incidents
The number of assaults on staff is also up by 4% over the quarter, and 15% over the year
The number of incidents of self-harm are also up, with the second highest ever recorded quarterly figure
The number of deaths has decreased to 73 from 77 over the last quarter, and the annual number has also slightly decreased to 309 from 311

Photo credit: Andy Aitchison

PRT comment: Safety in custody statistics

Commenting on the latest Ministry of Justice Safety in Custody Statistics published today (25 April), Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“These numbers show that there is a very long way to go before our prison system is safe for the people who live and work in it. The rise in self-inflicted deaths is especially concerning.

“Everyone will hope that the modest improvement in both self-harm and assault figures in the most recent quarter may be the start of a trend, although it is far too early to say. But it would be a mistake, when a change may have started to happen, to put that at risk. Rolling out the deployment of PAVA spray to all prison officers will undermine the relationships between staff and prisoners on which all aspects of safety ultimately depend.”

Photo credit: Andy Aitchison

PRT comment: Record levels of self-harm and assaults and a rise in deaths

Commenting on the Ministry of Justice’s safety in custody statistics, published today, Mark Day, Head of Policy and Communications at the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“These disturbing figures show every indicator of prison safety to be pointing the wrong way, with a rise in numbers of natural and self-inflicted deaths and record levels of self-harm and assaults. The measures the government have put in place to improve prison safety, including increasing staff numbers and the roll out of a new key worker model, have not yet succeeded in reversing this rising trend. Plans to roll out PAVA spray to all prison staff on the closed adult male estate risk making a volatile situation even worse.”

PRT comment: safety in custody statistics

Commenting on the publication of today’s safety in custody statistics, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“Despite the unrelenting effort of many in the system, all of these indicators show that there is no end in sight to the catastrophe that has engulfed many of our prisons. The government has recruited more staff and spent money on security. But so far it has only talked about reducing the number of prisoners the system holds. That needs to change, with action for the short and long term which will bring the prison population back down to a level where safety can be restored.”

PRT comment: Prisons and Probation Ombudsman Annual Report 2017–18

Commenting on the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman Annual Report 2017–18, Mark Day, Head of Policy and Communications at the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“This disturbing report paints a bleak picture of a prison system where people are dying needlessly, and where lessons clearly set out by the Ombudsman are not being learned. Despite highlighting a welcome fall in self-inflicted deaths, there are worrying signs that this trend is in danger of reversing. A lack of suitably qualified mental health professionals in prison and the ability to transfer severely mentally ill people out of prison and into treatment remain significant concerns.

“It is clear that prisons need an effective strategy to deal with the destructive impact of psychoactive substances. This must include measures to limit demand as well as supply through more time out of cell and purposeful activity. The high rate of natural deaths underscores the desperate need for a properly resourced older prisoners strategy.

“The routine loss and damage to prisoners’ property continues to be a source of needless frustration, which could be easily remedied by prisons following clear and simple procedures for recording ownership and arranging transfers.”

Reducing conflict and improving safety in our prisons

PRT comment: HMP Nottingham

Commenting on today’s inspection report, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“This report shames us as a nation. It speaks of a fundamental failure to administer justice in a civilised way.

“But it is not an isolated example. Between 2013 and 2017, 1,364 people died in prison in England and Wales. 447 of those took their own life, and 21 were killed by a fellow prisoner. Nottingham prison is symptomatic of a disastrous political decision to slash resources from a chronically overcrowded prison system. Local failures must be rigorously exposed, as the Chief Inspector and Ombudsman rightly have done, and must be put right. But it was a political decision that broke the prison system and it will take political leadership to fix it. That must start with using prison less—it is time for ministers to step up.”