Wormwood Scrubs inspection report 2021
Report for Wormwood Scrubs Prison
Summary
Wormwood Scrubs is a famous, category B, men’s local prison in west London that held just over 1,000 prisoners at the time of our inspection, of whom a third were foreign nationals, more than half were black, Asian or minority ethnic and two-thirds were unsentenced. It has had a troubled recent history culminating in our 2017 inspection, when we described the ‘intractability and persistence of failure at this prison’. When inspectors returned in 2019, they found a muchimproved situation and I am pleased to say that this report shows that progress in many areas has been maintained. The prison feels calm and well-ordered and inspectors who knew the prison well noted a better atmosphere than in the past. The prison was safer than at our last inspection. Assaults on staff and the use of force had continued to fall, while the rate of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults was one of the lowest of all local prisons.