The prison was given a full inspection in June/July 2023, the full report can be read on the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website, just follow the links below. In their latest report the inspectors said:
HMP Dartmoor is a category C training prison for adult men in Princetown, Devon, one of Britain’s oldest prisons, run by HM Prison and Probation Service. It held 684 prisoners against a certified normal capacity of 640, with around 98 men doubled up in cramped, pre-Victorian cells to absorb the overcrowding. Inspectors rated safety Reasonably Good, a decline from Good, respect Not Sufficiently Good, also a decline, purposeful activity Poor, a significant decline, and rehabilitation and release planning Reasonably Good, the only area to improve.
Strengths included good staff-prisoner relationships, effective offender management under newer leadership, a strong and committed chaplaincy team, a partnership with The Clink charity’s prison kitchen, and a football-based course run with Plymouth Argyle. Behaviour on the wings was generally calm and respectful despite the prison’s wider problems, and body-worn cameras captured the large majority of use-of-force incidents.
Inspectors raised weak management oversight of the regime, incident reporting and education, and found the regime itself heavily curtailed, with unemployed prisoners getting under four hours out of cell a day and nearly half of exercise periods cancelled. Healthcare was hit by severe staffing gaps after a difficult handover to a new provider, with dental waits running to many months. Waiting lists for education were long and a workshop stood idle, while drug availability and self-harm were both worse than at comparable prisons, and five prisoners had taken their own lives since the last inspection. There were no accredited offending behaviour programmes for the sizeable population convicted of sexual offences, and the ageing buildings suffered leaking roofs, broken laundry equipment and patchy CCTV coverage. Inspectors also noted that the main induction room had been closed because of the presence of radon gas.
Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
October 2023
HMP Dartmoor has in fact been closed and empty of prisoners since August 2024, after the radon contamination noted above proved more serious than first thought; the government has continued paying to secure the site while remediation work is planned, the Health and Safety Executive issued a Crown Censure against HM Prison and Probation Service over the exposure in May 2026, and as of August 2026 no reopening date has been set.
To read the full reports, go to the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website or follow the links below:
- Inspection report (PDF), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Dartmoor by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (19 June–6 July 2023, published 9 October 2023)
- Easy read summary of the 2023 inspection report
- Action plan, HM Prison and Probation Service action plan in response to the 2023 inspection of HMP Dartmoor
- HMP Dartmoor, Report on a scrutiny visit to HMP Dartmoor (September 2020)