Coronavirus
In this section, you can find out how we are responding to the pandemic, and what we’re doing to help ensure that the lives of prisoners, staff and our community are protected during this period of unprecedented challenge.
Getting help
If you know of someone in prison in need of advice and information then please tell them to get in contact with us directly.
The Ministry of Justice has also posted a Q&A for friends and family of people in prison.
If you are concerned about a person in prison and would like support yourself, please contact the Prisoners’ Families Helpline.
Our Covid-19 prisons project: CAPPTIVE
The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the lives of prisoners, their families and those that work in prison. Widescale lockdown with people held in cells for up to 23 and a half hours a day, as well as the suspension of family visits since March 2020 have placed an immense strain on prisoners and their loved ones during this unprecedented time.
In response, we established an urgent project—CAPPTIVE (The Covid Action Prison Project: Tracking Innovation, Valuing Experience) to hear from people in prison, and the people who care about them, about their own experience of the pandemic, and to ensure that prisoners’ voices are heard in the discussions amongst wider society about what our lives will look like after the pandemic.
Contributions to the project from prisoners, family members and the organisations that support them informed a series of rapid review reports that will be vital in ensuring we have the evidence to continue our work effectively both now and in the future.
These reports brought the direct experiences, insights and ideas for change to the attention of those who most need to hear them, in Parliament, in the Ministry of Justice and the prison service.
Our CAPPTIVE reports
View all- September 2021 CAPPTIVE: Women’s experiences of prison during the Covid-19 lockdown regime In early June 2020, PRT launched CAPPTIVE with an appeal in Inside Time and Converse—prison newspa... CAPPTIVE: Women’s experiences of prison during the Covid-19 lockdown regime
- February 2021 CAPPTIVE: Prisoners’ health during the Covid-19 pandemic CAPPTIVE, a collaborative project by the Prison Reform Trust and our Prisoner Policy Network, aims t... CAPPTIVE: Prisoners’ health during the Covid-19 pandemic
- October 2020 CAPPTIVE: Regimes, reactions to the pandemic, and progression Our second CAPPTIVE briefing examines the impact of measures introduced to minimise the risk of infe... CAPPTIVE: Regimes, reactions to the pandemic, and progression
- July 2020 CAPPTIVE: Speed up video calls rollout in prison to ease families’ lockdown anguish The rollout of secure video calls in prisons should be speeded up to ease the distress of families a... CAPPTIVE: Speed up video calls rollout in prison to ease families’ lockdown anguish
Share your experience
We’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to the CAPPTIVE project so far. As part of our continuing work on the CAPPTIVE project, we would like to invite people with lived experience of imprisonment to continue submitting their responses on the following topics:
- Black, Minority Ethnic and Muslim experience of prison during the Covid ‘double lockdown’; and
- Innovative practices witnessed in the prison estate.
Prisoners, family members and organisations that support them can contribute their experiences and thoughts using the contact details below.
