HMP Stocken, HMIP Inspections

The prison was subjected to an inspection during January/February 2023. In the latest inspection the report said

Stocken is a men’s category C training prison in Rutland that held 1,051 prisoners at the time of our inspection. Prisoners arrived at the prison from across England, including from as far afield as the south coast or Liverpool.

The acting governor came into post in September 2022 and since then had established a new vision that focused on building the competence, resilience and well-being of his staff, and getting prisoners back into purposeful activity.

Staff recruitment and retention remained the biggest challenge for Stocken, with shortages in every area from officers, operational support grades and teachers. Despite this, the governor had prioritised purposeful activity and it was a refreshing change to visit a prison that was approaching its pre-pandemic activity levels. Free-flow of prisoners had been reintroduced and up to 500 men were moving peaceably around the prison to work, education or training. There was also evening association on offer for enhanced prisoners and those who were working.

The prison was being badly let down by the education provider who was under a notice to improve, but had nevertheless been awarded an extension on the contract. The curriculum on offer was not suitable for the prisoners at Stocken and there were not enough teachers. In recent months, turnover of education staff had been extremely high, leaving some serious questions about the culture and competence of the provider. The result was the succession of empty classrooms I saw when I walked around and prisoners on long waiting lists to get on to courses.

The distance that many prisoners were held from home was a cause of much frustration at Stocken, particularly as the telephone system kept breaking down, including over Christmas. Engineers were finally due to come and fix a problem that had been going on for many months. Prisoners also struggled to get visits at weekends when there was a waiting list, meaning they were lucky if they could see their families and friends more than once a month. These visits were often cut back to an hour – not enough time for families who had travelled long distances.

Conditions in the jail had deteriorated since our last inspection and many of the wings were tatty and, in some cases, dirty, with dried food splashed on the walls of kitchens and grimy staircases and wings. The heating had stopped working on one unit and some windows were broken.

Although relationships between staff and prisoners were generally reasonable, we were disappointed to see too many officers sitting in offices rather than on the wing engaging with prisoners. It will take commitment from leaders to change what appeared to have become a habit that was partly a result of the layout of the wings.

The care for prisoners in their early days was not good enough, with anxious new arrivals being left unattended for many hours with nothing to do, and limited staff interaction. Some received an incomplete induction and were waiting too long to receive important information about the prison. A failure to understand and share key information about prisoners was potentially putting their safety at risk, particularly where health needs were not communicated to the induction wing.

There had been impressive work to make Stocken safer: violence had reduced since our last inspection and was below the average of the prison’s equivalent jails. This was despite the open regime where large numbers of prisoners were able to go to the well-used gym and library or to other activities by themselves. Good work had also been done to address self-harm, which was lower than in similar prisons, but more analysis of data on the use of segregation may have helped to reduce the time that some prisoners spent on the unit.

The governor and his team have much to be proud of; they had worked hard to improve the jail, which achieved higher scores in our healthy prison assessments for safety, and rehabilitation and release planning than at our last inspection. They had reduced the supply of drugs and phones into the prison and this had helped them to make some impressive reductions in levels of violence, that remained low despite the more open regime.

The key challenges for the next year will be recruiting enough staff in key roles and improving the way they engage with prisoners; improving the infrastructure and cleanliness of the prison; and making sure that the education provider delivers a much better service. I am confident that should this impressive governor remain in place and develop his inexperienced but enthusiastic leadership team, the prison has the potential to become one of the best in the country.

Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
March 2023

The inspectors provided a short list of their major concerns

What needs to improve at HMP Stocken

During this inspection we identified 15 key concerns, of which five 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. Too few key work sessions were being delivered and officers spent too long in offices instead of interacting with prisoners on the wings, limiting staff-prisoner relationships.
  2. The prison’s infrastructure was in poor condition and in need of investment.
  3. There were not enough full-time activity spaces available to meet the needs of the population.
  4. Leaders and managers did not offer a broad enough curriculum that met prisoners’ needs and prisoners could not study mathematics above entry level.
  5. It was difficult for prisoners to maintain contact with their family and friends.

Key concerns

  1. Support for prisoners during their early days was weak. Not all prisoners’ risks were identified or shared with staff, and prisoners did not receive information about the prison.
  2. Communal areas, food serving areas on wings and some cells were dirty. Adequate supplies of cleaning materials were not routinely issued to prisoners, and staff did not monitor wing cleaning.
  3. Strategic oversight of equality and inclusion was limited and action to address potential disproportionality or to promote diversity across the prison were too often delegated to the small equality team.
  4. Too many mentally unwell patients waited beyond the recommended timeframe for a transfer under the Mental Health Act to external specialist mental health units.
  5. The lack of a pharmacist to provide professional oversight had led to some weaknesses in the service
  6. Patients on opiate substitution treatment did not always see the prescriber in person for their 13-week review or to receive routine clinical observations.
  7. There were not offer appropriate qualifications in work areas to support prisoners to develop valuable employment skills.
  8. Staff had not received suitable training so they could support prisoners with learning difficulties to make swift progress.
  9. Too many prisoners continued to arrive at Stocken without an assessment of their risks or needs. (To HMPPS)
  10. Contact between offender managers and most prisoners was infrequent or task driven and did not consistently support men to make progress in their sentence

Return to Stocken

To see the full report go to the Ministry of Justice web site