The UK government has launched a new project to tackle drug use and violence at ten of the country’s most challenging prisons.
With a budget of £10m, the ‘Ten Prisons Project’ will be in operation by the end of 2018, and will pursue a number of strategies to improve security and living conditions, with concrete results expected within 12 months of the initiative’s launch.
The ten prisons in question are:
- Hull
- Humber
- Isis
- Leeds
- Lindholme
- Moorland
- Nottingham
- Ranby
- Wealstun
- Wormwood Scrubs
All of these prisons have faced challenges with drug use, security and building issues, and the new investment will prioritise staff training and new security measures, in the hope of developing a new model of best practice which can then be employed at all prisons throughout the country.
What initiatives will the ‘Ten Prisons Project’ pursue to improve conditions?
The project will take a holistic approach to the challenges facing each prison. This means that prison governors will invest in everything from repairing basic infrastructure, such as broken windows, to installing new, state-of-the-art scanners capable of detecting packages inside bodies.
Prisons will also hire sniffer dogs trained to identify popular new psychoactive substances, and train support staff to challenge disruptive and violent behaviour in a consistent and firm way, to promote good behaviour among the prison population.
£6m of the total budget has been designated to improve physical security, aimed at preventing the flow of drugs, phones and other contraband products into the prisons. £3m will be invested in infrastructure repairs and improvements in quality of life, while the final £1m will fund the development and delivery of bespoke training programmes aimed at driving improvement.
What impact does the UK government hope the project will have?
Announcing the ‘Ten Prisons Project’, UK Prisons Minister Rory Stewart said that the changes the project could deliver would have a wide-ranging and transformative impact: “With the right leadership on the ground, and support from the centre, these 10 prisons will pave the way for a new approach, a new ethos and a new direction. We need to make these prisons calmer, more orderly places and in the end that comes down to challenging and managing prisoners consistently, firmly and fairly. And we will put our support and training behind our prison officers to make that happen.”
