The prison was given a full inspection in September/October 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 Dovegate is a category B training prison for adult men near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, run by Serco, with capacity for around 1,160 men and home to the only privately run, purpose-built prison therapeutic community unit in the country. At the time of the inspection it held 1,139 prisoners. Inspectors rated safety, respect and preparation for release all Reasonably Good, unchanged from the previous inspection, while purposeful activity fell from Not Sufficiently Good to Poor, the only area to decline.
Staff-prisoner relationships were found to be a genuine strength, with almost all prisoners having a key worker and half reporting recent positive engagement with staff. Peer health champions ran an impressive range of clinics and health checks, an assistance-dog training project was highlighted as innovative practice, and the therapeutic community itself was described as thriving, supporting prisoners with complex needs and learning difficulties.
Set against this, inspectors found rates of prisoner-on-prisoner violence and drug availability both worse than at comparable prisons, linking much of it to boredom among wing-based workers who lacked sufficient meaningful activity for what is meant to be a training prison. English and maths teaching was weak, prisoners arriving late in the day sometimes missed alcohol detox or opiate substitution treatment with no overnight welfare checks in place, and some prisoners waited many months for a Mental Health Act hospital transfer. Broken window grilles left some cells poorly ventilated, delays of around a month were common for prisoners getting access to their property, dental waits exceeded thirty-nine weeks for some, and almost a third of those released left without settled accommodation arranged.
Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
January 2024
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 Dovegate by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (18 September–5 October 2023) | Easy read summary of the 2023 inspection report |
| Action plan, action plan in response to the 2023 inspection of HMP Dovegate | HMP Dovegate, Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Dovegate (30 September–11 October 2019) |
This prison is a joke
One of the inmates of this prison has been on social media twice
Once looking on my daughters TikTok account
He has posted pictures of himself and others in the prison on fb
He and 2 others kicked or stamped my brother to death 3 years ago
Prison system is broken and the governor of this prison should be sacked
How could this be allowed 1 year into a 22 year sentence
Wake up people