Maidstone inspection report 2023
Report for Maidstone Prison
Summary
Maidstone is a category C training prison that held 579 foreign national offenders at the time of our inspection, many of whom were likely to be deported at the end of their sentences. The prison is more than 200 years old and some of the original, dark, cavernous, and sometimes damp cells remained, with poor ventilation and little natural light. These spartan conditions were, in part, mitigated by very high standards of cleanliness and the fact that most prisoners were in single cells. There was also a programme to improve the showers which meant they were mostly better than we saw in our last visit. The governor, well-liked by both prisoners and staff, had arrived just six months before the inspection and had begun to make improvements, setting clear, suitable and well-communicated priorities. This included an improvement in the regime, which meant that since September, prisoners in work or education were out of their cells for seven hours and 45 minutes a day, while those who were unemployed had four hours.