HMIP Reports, HMP Bristol

The prison was given an inspection in July 2023. The full report can be read at the Ministry of Justice web site, just follow the links below. In their latest report the inspectors said:

HMP Bristol is a category B reception prison holding up to 580 adult men, although the roll was slightly reduced at the time of our inspection. Situated in an inner-city location, the prison serves the local courts, receiving prisoners from the community, and many returned repeatedly to the institution. Many of those we met were unconvicted or unsentenced prisoners, with nearly a third presenting with substance misuse issues and a fifth in need of mental health assessments.

Following this inspection of the prison, I wrote to the Secretary of State invoking the Urgent Notification (UN) process on 28 July 2023. In that letter, and in the inspection debriefing paper that accompanied it (both published with this report at www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons), I set out my concerns and the judgements that had caused me to follow that course of action. Under the UN protocol, the Secretary of State commits to respond publicly to my letter within 28 days, explaining how outcomes for those detained will be improved. His response, for which I am grateful, is also published on our website.

As I indicated in my UN letter, it was very concerning that this was the second time in consecutive inspections of prisons since 2019 that I had needed to invoke this process. This was our fifth inspection of Bristol since 2013 and it continued to be a prison with chronic and seemingly intractable problems. In our three most recent inspections it attracted our lowest healthy prison test scores for both safety and purposeful activity.

Healthy prison assessments for HMP Bristol since 2013
1 – outcomes for prisoners are poor
2 – outcomes for prisoners are not sufficiently good
3 – outcomes for prisoners are reasonably good
4 – outcomes for prisoners are good
Safety Respect Purposeful Activity RRP
2023 1 2 1 2
2019 1 2 1 2
2017 1 2 1 2
2014 2 2 2 2
2013 2 1 1 3

 

Our findings confirmed what HMPPS data already showed: Bristol remained one of the most unsafe prisons in the country, with levels of recorded violence – including serious assaults on both staff and prisoners – higher than in most other adult prisons. Shockingly, there had been eight self-inflicted deaths since our last inspection, with another immediately after it. Of these deaths, six had occurred in recent months. In addition, one man had also recently been charged with murdering his cellmate.

The physical effects of long-term drug misuse in the population were evident. In our survey, 46% of prisoners said it was easy to get drugs in the prison, and this was consistent with a mandatory testing rate of over 25%. Despite this, the strategies employed to address the drug problem, the violence, and the self[1]harm challenges had not worked. Leaders and staff failed to set high enough standards, poor behaviour went unchallenged, and sanctions or consequences for delinquency were inadequate. Busy officers struggled to forge good relationships with prisoners or motivate them to make progress, not helped by the fact that most prisoners were locked up for almost 22 hours a day. Underpinning many of these failings was the inadequacy of the daily regime, with too few prisoners allocated to education, skills and work, compounded by low attendance among the minority who were.

The prison was overcrowded, with almost half of the prisoners living in double cells designed for one. The capacity of the prison had been increased on several occasions since the last inspection. There was insufficient health provision, particularly for prisoners who were mentally unwell; they faced long delays in transferring to secure hospitals, with too many left to languish in segregated conditions. Work to reduce reoffending and planning for future release were both neglected. For example, the limited support offered to help maintain family contact had deteriorated, and a quarter of prisoners were routinely discharged as homeless on their day of release.

Many of the senior team were new to their roles and this continued a pattern of leadership instability. Their intentions and aspirations were often laudable but leaders at all levels had consistently overestimated the prison’s performance and did not have a firm grip on the many challenges that it faced. The safety of individual prisoners, addressing their evident vulnerabilities while providing a meaningful and active regime, seemed to us to be central priorities. To achieve this, the prison needs more effective leadership in many critical areas, and higher expectations and standards that are delivered predictably and consistently.

Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
August 2023

The report includes a list of the major recommendations.

 

What needs to improve at HMP Bristol

During this inspection we identified 15 key concerns, of which six should be treated as priorities. Priority concerns are those that are most important to improving outcomes for prisoners. They require immediate attention by leaders and managers. Leaders should make sure that all concerns identified here are addressed and that progress is tracked through a plan which sets out how and when the concerns will be resolved. The plan should be provided to HMI Prisons.

Priority concerns

  1. Staffing across the prison was insufficient to ensure the delivery of a safe and purposeful regime. Staff shortages, in particular at officer level and in health care, had restricted significantly the daily regime and other outcomes for prisoners.
  2. Levels of violence were too high. The strategy to make the prison safer was too narrow and failed to address significant underlying causes. This included the absence of clear boundaries for behaviour, ineffective staff-prisoner engagement, and the impact of such a poor regime.
  3. The number of self-inflicted deaths and the rate of reported self[1]harm were much too high. The poor regime, ineffective relationships with wing staff and a lack of support – for example, a lack of help to support and rebuild family ties – contributed to a sense of hopelessness and despondency among many prisoners.
  4. Most prisoners spent almost 22 hours a day locked up, with half of them sharing cramped cells designed for one. This affected prisoner well-being and frustrated attempts to rehabilitate them.
  5. Leaders and managers did not allocate sufficient prisoners to education, skills and work, but even when they were allocated, too few attended.
  6. Work to prepare prisoners for release was poorly coordinated and under-resourced. Prisoners’ needs and risks were not reliably identified, reviewed or addressed, and a quarter of prisoners were released homeless.

Key concerns

  1. Illicit drugs were readily available to prisoners. Although security measures had improved, not enough had been done to prevent the supply and address the demand for drugs.
  2. Wing staff did not develop effective relationships with prisoners. The prison was not delivering key work (see Glossary), wing staff had little time to advocate for prisoners who needed their help and they lacked the capability and confidence to manage behaviour more effectively.
  3. Prisoners with physical disabilities did not have fair access to services in the prison. They were unable to attend health care or the dentist and regularly struggled to attend activities off the wing due to broken lifts and a lack of staff to escort them.
  4. Acutely mentally unwell patients faced unacceptable delays waiting for transfer to secure inpatient facilities under the Mental Health Act. Several of the 12 waiting at the time of the inspection were being held in segregated conditions, which was wholly inappropriate.
  5. Leaders did not ensure that prisoners had access to a sufficient range of accredited courses, including in English and mathematics, that would help them gain employment in prison or on release.
  6. Leaders did not make sure that all prisoners with additional learning needs had the support they needed.
  7. Workshop instructors did not identify with prisoners the essential people and social skills that they needed to develop to help them to be successful at work, and the steps they needed to take to achieve these.
  8. Work to help prisoners rebuild ties with their families and significant others was too limited and poorly resourced.
  9. There was not enough support for remanded and unsentenced prisoners. This cohort now made up the majority of the population. Their needs were not always assessed on arrival, they had, for example, no regular key work or equivalent, were excluded from most housing support, and could not even easily access the library for legal materials

Return to Bristol

To read the full reports, go to the Ministry of Justice site or follow the links below:

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