Dovegate inspection report 2024
Report for Dovegate Prison
Summary
This Serco-run category B prison in Staffordshire had a population of 1,139 when we inspected. The jail had a mix of functions with substantial remand and long-term populations and a therapeutic community holding 16% of the men. The director who took over in January 2023 was the seventh in the last 10 years. This lack of stability meant that the jail had not progressed as much as we would have expected, particularly in our purposeful activity healthy prison test, in which we awarded our lowest score of poor. This was very disappointing because education provision was also run by Serco, so there were none of the contracting issues we see with other prisons; it meant that Dovegate was failing to fulfil its role as a training prison. While most of the long-term population was in work or education, many jobs were on the wings where prisoners were underemployed and spent much of their time with not enough to do.