HMP Ranby, HMIP Inspections

The prison was subjected to an inspection in March/April 2022. In their report the inspectors said in their introduction:

As a result of concerted efforts by prison leaders, and with the use of better technology, Ranby, a category C training and resettlement prison in Nottinghamshire, was much safer jail than at our inspections in 2016 and 2018. The flow of drugs had been a chief cause of violence but had been stemmed with better perimeter security, use of dogs and body scanners.

Leaders had taken advantage of the COVID-19 lockdowns to reset, focusing on breaking the cycle of violence. Our survey showed that prisoners felt much safer than they had at the time of our last inspection, and longer-serving staff members also said they were not experiencing anything like the levels of threat that they had suffered in the past.

We saw improvements across all parts our safety test, for which the prison was awarded our highest grade, ‘good’, with fewer assaults on staff and prisoners, better oversight of the use of force, good planning, and provision in place to improve the behaviour of the most violent prisoners and care for the most vulnerable.

Conditions in the prison were also gradually improving. Some of the more dilapidated wings had been refurbished and checks were in place to make sure that cells were clean and largely free from graffiti. Prisoners had recently been given laptops on which they were able to complete some of their domestic tasks, and inspectors were optimistic that once some initial issues were fixed, there would be an improvement in the response times to applications, complaints and diversity incident report forms. The functionality of the laptops was still limited, but there was scope for future expansion.

At the time of our inspection the prison had been at stage one of the HMPPS COVID-19 recovery framework for more than three weeks – this meant that most restrictions should have been lifted and the prison should have resumed its training role. While inspectors were sympathetic to the idea of a gradual return to full activities, leaders had been far too cautious in their approach and there were no dates set for when the regime was to be opened up. The very well-resourced workshops were almost empty, only a handful of prisoners attended classes, and the orderlies were usually the only ones in the library. Those prisoners who could not read were not supported by the education provider and were fortunate if they were allocated a peer mentor. More than 52% of prisoners were unemployed, and many were stuck in their cells or on their spurs with little or nothing to occupy their time.

The prison had recently introduced ‘structured on wing activity’ (SOWA), but the rationale was not clear to staff or to prisoners, mainly because leaders had failed to consider and communicate the outcomes they expected from this initiative. There appeared to be an eclectic mix of activities on offer to prisoners, though many – such as exercising outdoors or playing table tennis – could, in normal circumstances, have done as part of daily association time. A substance misuse workshop and an offender management surgery were also advertised, but staff from these two departments had not been told and nobody turned up.

Unemployed prisoners who did not sign up for SOWA activities were locked in their cells for an extra half hour; a shocking 23 hours a day behind their doors.

HMPPS had not done enough to prevent Ranby from becoming out of kilter with its remit as a training prison. More than 65% of prisoners transferred to the jail for resettlement as they reached the end of their sentences, but leaders had not responded to or planned for this change and were not providing adequate services for these men. Two particular community offender managers were working very hard to clear the backlog of cases, but the OMU was woefully under-resourced for the population, leading one frustrated prisoner to quip: ‘OM-who?’.

At the time of our inspection, Ranby was not operating as a category C training prison. Just keeping prisoners safe is not good enough, and if it is to fulfil its essential function in giving them the skills, knowledge, confidence and work ethic to support their return to the community, leaders urgently need to get them into the workshops and classrooms which should be a thriving part of this jail. The prison must break out of its COVID-19 inertia and provide meaningful, well[1]planned, and structured activities. It was telling that the most impressive work being done by prisoners was cooking and serving in the staff canteen – the challenge for leaders is to make the rest of the prison as productive.

Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
May 2022

Return to Ranby

To see the full report go to the Ministry of Justice web sites.These links contains the reports for Ranby from 2002 until present: