The Inspectorate took the rare step of issuing a Urgent Notification letter to the Justice Secretary on the 18th November 2022. These Urgent Notification letters are only written when the Inspector has major concerns about a prison and are rarely issued. The prison was inspected in the November 2022 and 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:
Exeter is a men’s reception prison with a small resettlement function that held 388 prisoners at the time of our inspection. It has had a troubled recent history and in 2018 was subjected to an urgent notification because of its inability to keep the prisoners in its care safe. Four years on, I am disappointed to report that things have not improved at anything like the rate that we would have expected. Although this report points to some small improvements and some potentially promising work, the levels of care, particularly for the most vulnerable, were still nowhere near good enough. As a result, I was left with no alternative but to invoke the urgent notification again, the first time this has happened in consecutive inspections of an adult prison.
We were particularly concerned about the care given to prisoners in their first days and weeks in the jail. This is a critical and risky time in reception prisons during which prisoners feel frightened, overwhelmed, and are more likely to take their own lives. Support for new arrivals was particularly important at Exeter as more men than at similar prisons had mental health and substance misuse needs. The induction process at Exeter, however, was chaotic and lacked proper leadership oversight despite there having been 10 self-inflicted deaths since our last inspection. This was compounded by failures in the substance misuse service, which meant that some arrivals assessed as requiring supervision with medication and detoxification were not regularly visited by heath care staff. Most vulnerable prisoners spent their early days at Exeter on a wing with the general population, which put their wellbeing at risk. One prisoner, charged with a sexual offence, who had not been in prison before, described being locked up on C wing for days on end, with meals served at his door while prisoners outside shouted abuse at him. He had not received a proper induction outlining what would happen next, and he thought that this was how he was going to serve his entire sentence.
The levels of self-harm were the highest of all male reception prisons and although the jail had recently put some processes in place reduce this, it remained too high. Staff shortages in health care meant that the many prisoners who had mental health needs were not getting the support they needed.
Elsewhere, the quality of purposeful activity had declined and was now poor. Prisoners were locked up for long periods of time and very few attended work or education despite the availability of places. Long delays to education induction meant that many prisoners did not even have the chance to put themselves forward to join an activity. There seemed to be an assumption amongst staff that prisoners did not want to work, but inspectors talked to many who were bored and desperate to get off the wing and do something with their time. The learning and skills curriculum on offer was not appropriate for the jail, meaning that the completion rates for courses were astonishingly low.
The support from the prison service for Exeter did not appear to have matched that given to other prisons that have been subject to an urgent notification. Staff attrition in key management positions was high – the prison had a total of 8 deputy governors since the last inspection, one of whom left to take up a position with the Prison Group Director. Only recently had a decision been made to upgrade the pay for the deputy’s post. In addition, there have been 8 heads of safety in a prison that had previously been assessed as fundamentally unsafe by inspectors. In 2018 inspectors noted that CCTV was not working properly, four years later it had got worse. Astonishingly, during this inspection, four officers were on detached duty elsewhere in the estate, suggesting a lack of awareness by the prison service of the serious weaknesses at Exeter.
The governor was well liked by both staff and prisoners and was visible around the jail, but he did not have enough oversight or assurance needed to create a safer environment. This was, in part, due to the high turnover of staff in senior positions, and where there had been stability, for example in the offender management unit, we found an effective and well-motivated team.
Exeter will require a period of stability in the next year and a relentless focus on improving the safety of prisoners and making sure that they are able to spend more time in productive activity outside their cells. We will return to the prison in 2023 when we expect to see some meaningful progress – to achieve this, Exeter will need strong commitment from the staff team and significant support from the prison service.
Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
November 2022
The inspectors also proved a short summary of their key concerns
What needs to improve at HMP Exeter
During this inspection we identified 11 key concerns, of which four 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
- National leaders had failed to provide stability of leadership at the prison. Exeter had had three governors, eight deputy governors and eight heads of safety since our previous inspection. This instability of leadership impeded progress at a high-risk site.
- The number of self-inflicted deaths and incidents of self-harm was very high. Care for prisoners who were vulnerable on arrival or those who were in crisis while in custody was poor.
- The lack of clinical leadership and chronic staff shortages across the service had a detrimental impact on patient safety and the provision of care, particularly in the area of mental health. This resulted in practice that did not meet national standards and unmet need for many patients.
- Many prisoners spent too long locked in their cells, purposeful activity was not prioritised, and few prisoners took advantage of what was offered, limiting their prospects of rehabilitation and reducing reoffending.
Key concerns
- The level of violence at the prison was high and leaders were unaware of many of the causes. Investigations into violent incidents were inadequate and did not inform an action plan to identify and reduce violence among prisoners.
- There was no key worker scheme, staff-prisoner relationships were mostly transactional and prisoners were frustrated by the inability of staff to meet legitimate requests.
- The standard of the cells was poor. Many had no glass in the windows, exposed electric wires, floors in need of repair and some contained mould.
- The education, skills and work curriculum was not fit for purpose. It did not provide meaningful or relevant learning or training opportunities which met prisoners’ varied needs.
- Leaders and managers had not dealt with the long-standing inadequacies of induction and allocations to education, skills and work.
- The role of the quality improvement group and its impact were now slight and leaders and managers did not use available data well to monitor and manage the quality and impact of the provision.
- Support to maintain family ties was not sufficiently focused on the outcomes experienced by prisoners. There were no family days, nothing to mitigate delays in adding numbers to prisoners’ pin phone accounts, basic interim visits provision and supervising staff who were not confident about visits times.
To read the full reports, go to the Ministry of Justice site or follow the links below:
- Inspection report (734 kB), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Exeter by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (31 October – 11 November 2022)
- HMP Exeter – report (PDF) (1 MB), Report on a scrutiny visit to HMP Exeter (9 and 16–17 March 2021)
- HMP Exeter (2.43 MB), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Exeter (14–24 May 2018)
- HMP Exeter (1.54 MB), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Exeter (15-26 August 2016)
- HMP Exeter, Unannounced inspection of HMP Exeter (29 July – 9 August 2013)
- HMP Exeter, Unannounced short follow-up inspection of HMP Exeter (5-7 July 2011)
- HMP Exeter, Announced inspection of HMP Exeter (12-16 October 2009)
- HMP Exeter, Unannounced short follow-up inspection of HMP Exeter (16-18 October 2007)