The prison was last inspected in June 2022 and the inspectors said in their report:
HMP Leeds is reception and resettlement prison located near to the city centre and holding just under 1100 adult men. Facing many of the operational challenges that are consistent with its ‘front-line’ responsibilities, the prison receives into custody about 388 new prisoners every month and releases back into the community approximately 172. The population comprises a mixture of remand and sentenced prisoners, the latter of which reflected the full range of sentences up to and including indeterminate sentenced men.
The old Victorian prison has a forbidding reputation and on first impression conforms to this characterful history. But this is not actually representative; despite the prison’s age, on this visit we were impressed by the excellent environmental standards, cleanliness, and positive feel of both the external grounds and the built environment, all of which were indicative of energy, confidence, and potential. It is important that this potential and the optimism it encourages is reflected in the prisoner experience by, for example, making improvements to the day-to-day regime, more time out of cell, and a greater and more consistent delivery of purposeful activity. As our report demonstrates, these are key priorities for this prison.
When we last inspected Leeds in 2019, we found a prison that needed to be safer and to provide a fuller regime, but one which was reasonably respectful and was ensuring reasonable rehabilitation and resettlement outcomes. At this inspection our assessments as reflected in our healthy prison tests remained the same, not an insignificant achievement in the context of the pressures experienced by prisons emerging from the recent pandemic.
Our findings confirmed to us that Leeds is a well-led prison and that leaders and managers were visible about the wings and had a realistic understanding about the challenges and opportunities, and that priorities were communicated successfully to staff and prisoners. Leaders were also creative in terms of their preparedness to support new initiatives, including support for staff well-being and retention. Staffing levels were reasonable and better than we see in many other prisons and this was reflected in our observation of some quite caring and supportive staff-prisoner relationships.
A key challenge the prison faced was ensuring sustainable improvement in safety outcomes. Despite evidence of falling incidents of self-harm, there had been at least 8 self-inflicted deaths since our last inspection. We acknowledged the work that the prison was doing to address this major issue, although more was certainly needed. However, positive early days in custody processes and reduced levels of violence were encouraging, and in our survey, significantly fewer prisoners than before indicated to us that they felt unsafe.
Eighteen men had died from natural causes in the last two years which was a very high number, but Leeds had a regional social care unit and a palliative care suite looking after severely ill and often elderly prisoners which increased the risk of morbidity. The PPO reports had not identified thematic concerns about the care they had received, and leaders responded proactively to individual recommendation made.
The turnover in numbers and the complexity of the prison’s population meant that demand for resettlement services was high. Our findings showed that convicted prisoners leaving the prison were experiencing better outcomes with respect to release planning than those who had been on remand. The prison was doing its best to mitigate these shortcomings, although it remained a clear gap. Similarly, we identified some weaknesses in the provision for the approximately 40% of prisoners who required offender management support, not the least of which was the delay caused by a lack of places elsewhere in moving convicted prisoners to an appropriate training prison.
Overall, this was a decent inspection of HMP Leeds. The prison had a capable and settled leadership as well as an experienced officer group. In most areas, outcomes were either reasonable or improving. Going forward, leaders must focus on efforts to reduce the number of self-inflicted deaths and be more ambitious in delivering a meaningful regime.
Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
July 2022
The Inspectors also published a note of their key concerns:
What needs to improve at HMP Leeds
During this inspection we identified 13 key concerns, of which six 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
- The number of deaths at Leeds since the last inspection continued to be high, 28 in total including eight self-inflicted, one attributed to drug use and two waiting to be classified.
- Too many prisoners were living in overcrowded cells originally designed for one.
- Time out of cell for many prisoners was poor.
- Leaders had not yet made sure that there were enough activity spaces, and the education curriculum was too narrow to meet the needs of a substantial proportion of prisoners.
- Leaders and managers did not allocate prisoners to work activities that related to their aspirations or future career goals.
- Almost half of prisoners were remanded and they had very little support with planning for their resettlement. Support available to them should be equivalent to other prisoners being released.
Key concerns
- The recently opened complex needs unit (CNU) had a clear aim of supporting prisoners with vulnerabilities including mental health problems. Clarity concerning its approach and methodology, as well as structures and systems of governance and oversight were, however, lacking.
- Prisoners with reduced or limited mobility were disadvantaged by a poor physical environment which made it difficult for them to access some areas or services.
- Some of the very basic processes and services needed in prison, such as an effective application system, the quality and quantity of food, and an efficient ordering system for the prison shop were poor which led to significant frustrations for prisoners.
- Prisoners identified as requiring treatment under the Mental Health Act waited too long to be transferred to hospital.
- Leaders and managers did not monitor the quality of prison-led activities, and too many prison instructors were not qualified in teaching or training. Consequently, instructors did not take account of prisoners’ existing skills or learning support needs. In too many work areas, prisoners did not gain new or valuable skills for employment, beyond those required for the job or to achieve the qualification where relevant.
- Prisoner attendance at their allocated work placement during the working day was poor and required immediate and sustained improvement.
- Resettlement services aimed at ensuring prisoners were released to employment or a training place were not good enough and more targeted help to assist them on release was required
The full reports can be read at the Ministry of Justice web site, just follow the links below:
- Inspection report (2 MB), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Leeds by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (13 and 20–24 June 2022)
- HMP Leeds (1.68 MB), Report on an announced inspection of HMP Leeds (25 November – 6 December 2019)
- HMP Leeds (645.69 kB), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Leeds (30, 31 October, 6–10 November 2017)
- HMP Leeds (PDF, 832.20 kB), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Leeds (30 November – 11 December 2015)
- HMP Leeds, Announced inspection of HMP Leeds (8–18 January 2013)
- HMP Leeds, Unannounced full follow-up inspection of HMP Leeds (3-12 March 2010)
- HMP Leeds, Unannounced inspection of HMP Leeds (5-14 December 2007)