Isle of Wight inspection report 2026

Summary

While some healthy prison assessment scores had improved on this inspection, Isle of Wight continued to be a jail that significantly underperformed with a lack of meaningful incentives for the many prisoners who behave well, a poor regime, frequent staff shortages and insufficient suitable workshop spaces for the population. Leaders were not helped by a sprawling, ageing site, particularly the Albany side that is simply not fit for purpose. The scores in our tests for safety and respect remained ‘not sufficiently good’, but purposeful activity and preparation for release, both rated as ‘poor’ last time, had improved to ‘not sufficiently good’ and ‘reasonably good’ respectively. The prison was in the process of taking on a greater proportion of category B prisoners convicted of sexual offences, some of whom were serving very long or indeterminate sentences. In our survey 56% of prisoners told us that drugs were easy to get; a large increase on our last inspection. There had also been an increase in rates of violence since our last visit.

Inspection ratings