First category C jail issued with urgent notification after ‘decade of decline’

The first category C prison has been issued with an urgent notification to improve after a “decade of decline” resulting in a “shocking level of neglect”, the prisons watchdog said.

Decrepit conditions, rising violence and self-harm, widespread illicit drug use and a lack of activity to prepare men for release were found at HMP Rochester in Kent during the inspection, HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) said.

The Chief Inspector of Prisons has written to the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood to invoke an urgent notification for improvement at the prison, which requires a response and action plan from the Justice Secretary within 28 days.

HMP Rochester, which is a training prison, was inspected between August 12 and 22.

The inspection was the latest in a decade of successively poor and declining inspections of the jail, despite the prison having been warned about inspectors’ concerns following an independent review of progress in 2022, HMIP said.

As a training and resettlement prison, Rochester’s focus should be on getting men into education, work and training to increase their chances of employment on release as well as delivering work to reduce prisoners’ risk of reoffending.

But Rochester was fundamentally failing in this, with inspectors finding less than a third of those it held being engaged in education, work or training and a “woeful” provision of public protection work, HMIP added.

The offender management unit was “ineffective” and “critically short” of trained probation staff to manage high-risk prisoners.

Conditions at Rochester were “squalid” with “decrepit” buildings and infestations of both rats and mice plaguing older buildings, the inspectorate said.

This meant prisoners resorted to creating barriers from cardboard to fill gaps under cell doors to try and keep vermin out of their cells.

They were some of the worst conditions inspectors had seen in recent years, the report said.

Leaders were not visible enough around the jail, and inexperienced staff lacked confidence and were not sufficiently supported to enforce basic rules and standards.

Wings were “chaotic” and safety was deteriorating, HMIP said. The rate of prisoner assaults had increased by 67% in the past year and there was more self-harm, it added. There had been two self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection.

Use of force was also high, and inspectors found some instances that were inappropriate.

The inspectorate also found that drugs were endemic, with 42% of prisoners testing positive in random testing and more than half of men telling inspectors that it was easy to get drugs, including those prescribed to other prisoners.

Relationships between staff and prisoners were poor, with significantly fewer prisoners saying that staff treated them with respect than at other comparable prisons, and inspectors finding significant evidence of disrespectful treatment of visitors by staff.

Inspectors also identified failings in healthcare provision. Medicine administration and supply arrangements were poor, meaning patients either missed or faced delays in receiving important medicines. Clinical appointments were cancelled too frequently, leading to considerable risk for patients.

The regional prison group director was aware of the many problems at Rochester and had appointed a new interim governor to try to address them, HMIP said.

However, the new governor had also been tasked with the additional challenge of reopening and managing the Cookham Wood site in response to national population pressures, with prisoners starting to be transferred to HMP Cookham Wood during the inspection. This created a potential distraction from the pressing issues in Rochester itself.

Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, said: “Rochester has been a prison of concern for many years with consistently poor outcomes which stem from failures in leadership, both locally and nationally and a lack of investment in a crumbling institution.

“This decade of decline, which has accelerated in the past 18 months, shows a shocking level of neglect.

“It is particularly concerning that a category C prison, the workhorse of the prison service, should require an urgent notification for our concerns to be taken seriously.”

Rochester is the seventh prison to be issued with an urgent notification since November 2022. The other prisons are Exeter, Woodhill, Bristol, Bedford, Wandsworth and Cookham Wood YOI.

Prisons and probation minister Lord Timpson said: “This is a deeply concerning report and yet another example of the dire state the last government left the prison system in.

“We owe it to our staff, doing their best in squalid conditions and under the threat of violence, to drag the system out of this chaos. This started with the immediate action the new Lord Chancellor took to end the overcrowding crisis in our prisons in July.

“In the 20 years I’ve worked with the prison service, I’ve never seen things so bad. This new government will grip this crisis and ensure that prisons like Rochester, that have been left to decay, stop breeding crime and start cutting it.”