Safety
The rate of violence remained too high.
Regime/Time Out of Cell
The regime in place during 2022 has provided two and a half hours out of cell each day for all prisoners. It is the IMB’s concern that this amount of time in cell becomes normalised and there are not sufficient efforts to return the prison to a properly staffed full regime.
Substance Misuse
Reports of drug use increased significantly in 2022 with 141 incidents reported.
Estate/Conditions
Repeated
The IMB has previously expressed concern at the number of badly fitting cell windows which have design problems, resulting in windows that are either jammed open or closed. This has been a problem since shortly after the prison opened and has not been resolved.
Staffing
Key work has suffered significantly, because of staffing difficulties. After some improvement in early 2022 there has been little delivery in subsequent months.
Regime/Time Out of Cell
It has been a turbulent year in the multifaith chaplaincy with services and activities not yet fully restored since Covid.
Education/Purposeful Activity
The HMIP report judges the provision of purposeful activity at Isis to be poor. As few as 18% of prisoners may be involved in purposeful activity out of cells during a morning or afternoon session.
Education/Purposeful Activity
HMIP assessed that there were insufficient opportunities to progress to higher level programmes.
Staffing
The offender management unit (OMU) has been understaffed all year and Band 4 prison offender managers (POMs) are often cross-deployed, impacting the work POMs are able to complete.
Resettlement/Release
There is a backlog of OASys reports, estimated to be about 80 at the end of 2022. There is also a backlog in recategorising prisoners, around 100 at the end of 2022.
Resettlement/Release
There are no accredited interventions that address, for instance, domestic abuse (BBR) or violence (Kaizen).
Resettlement/Release
The publication of the long-awaited policy framework for the management of prisoners’ property has had no effect on the continuing problem of prisoners’ property not arriving with them when they transfer into the prison.