The prison was given an Independent Review of Progress in October 2025, 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:
HMYOI Deerbolt is a category C training prison for up to 490 adult men near Barnard Castle, County Durham, run by HM Prison and Probation Service, with around a third of the population under 25. A full inspection in December 2024 had rated respect Not Sufficiently Good, a decline, with safety Not Sufficiently Good and purposeful activity Poor both unchanged, and preparation for release Reasonably Good, also unchanged. This Independent Review of Progress, carried out in October 2025, checks progress against the concerns raised then rather than re-scoring the four healthy prison tests.
Inspectors found good progress on preventing self-harm, with incidents down by around 30% following the appointment of a second full-time safety officer, and on healthcare access, which had become more stable with fewer cancelled clinics and a centralised system for methadone. Reasonable progress was recorded on violence, which had fallen by around a quarter though remained high, on staff-prisoner relationships following a new daily routine introduced in March 2025, and on preparing prisoners for release, helped by a new careers provider. Time locked up during the working day had fallen sharply, from 30% at the time of the full inspection to just 13%.
Set against this, inspectors found insufficient progress on tackling illicit drugs: the positive drug test rate had peaked at half of all tests in January 2025 before easing back to around a third, and the intelligence response to drugs entering the prison remained inadequate, with two suspected drug-related deaths during the year. Purposeful activity remained inadequate for what is meant to be a training prison, with only around 40% of prisoners engaged in meaningful activity and weekend regimes hit hardest by staff shortages. More than half of staff still had fewer than two years’ experience. Inspectors flagged continuing uncertainty over the visa status of overseas-recruited staff as a key risk to further progress.
Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
November 2025
To read the full reports, go to the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website or follow the links below:
- Independent Review of Progress report, HM Inspectorate of Prisons review of progress at HMYOI Deerbolt (13–15 October 2025, published 17 November 2025)
- Inspection report (PDF), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMYOI Deerbolt by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (3–19 December 2024, published 24 March 2025)
- Easy read summary of the December 2024 inspection report
- HMYOI Deerbolt, Report on an unannounced inspection of HMYOI Deerbolt (21 June–9 July 2021)