Norwich independent review of progress 2023
Report for Norwich Prison
Summary
we found improved outcomes in our healthy prison tests of respect, and rehabilitation and release planning. We judged these to be reasonably good, which reflected leaders’ achievements in promoting the rehabilitative purpose of the prison. There had, however, been no improvement in safety outcomes, which were still not sufficiently good; incidents of violence, self-harm and use of force were high, and the number of segregated prisoners had risen. The prison was also struggling to provide purposeful activity, which had deteriorated, and we judged this to be poor. During the working day we found nearly two-thirds of prisoners locked up, and our colleagues in Ofsted judged the overall effectiveness of education, skills and work activities to be ‘inadequate’. 1.4 The principal cause of these difficulties seemed to be the prison’s inability to recruit or retain staff, with a 40% shortfall in prison officer availability for operational duties. During this review, we found a more positive staffing situation; almost the full quota of prison officers had been recruited and resignations had reduced by half. The time that prisoners spent unlocked had increased as a consequence, although most activity was still part-time. Our Ofsted colleagues found ‘reasonable progress’ in three themes they reviewed, although there Report of an independent review of progress at HMP Norwich 3 was still ‘insufficient progress’ in the completion of induction and assessments for prisoners to be allocated to learning and work. Plans for a new central library and a prison-wide reading strategy were encouraging, although we found insufficient progress so far.