Brixton

Since the end of summer 2022 the prison population has continued to grow requiring the best use of every available space in the resettlement and training estates to ensure reception prisons have sufficient space to serve the courts. HMP Brixton remains a resettlement prison which accepts mainstream prisoners and people convicted of sexual offences from the reception and training estate who plan to resettle within the London probation region up to 24 months prior to release. It is recognised that in some cases HMPPS has asked prisons to be flexible with their populations and the Offender Flow model does require HMP Brixton to accept a C category prisoner where they may have outstanding offender focus work on their sentence plan. However, the allocated Prison Offender Manager locally does seek a treatment site to progress the prisoner to a more appropriate prison to allow them to address these outstanding elements should their time in custody permit. Despite the challenges posed by the ongoing population pressures, the prisoner population at HMP Brixton is currently 83% resettlement compared with 76% in March 2022.
The Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) model moved the responsibility for the completion of start custody Offender Assessment System (OASys) for long term custodial cases. Prisons received refreshed staffing profiles for Prison Offender Managers (POM) to reflect this change with prisons with a trainer or resettlement function resourced to undertake OASys activity. These prisons receive prisoners without an OASys report when they are allocated directly from reception prisons post-sentencing and ideally this should happen within ten working days. However, there are also instances where prisoners transfer from one training/resettlement prison to another without an OASys report, largely due to resourcing pressures which has created a national backlog of start of custody OASys assessments. HMP Brixton has received prisoners with incomplete OASys and additionally, many prisoners arrive within 7.5 months prior to their release where the responsibility for the OASys then sits with the Community Offender Manager. Whilst the prison makes every effort to tackle the backlog, further improvements are not anticipated at this time as despite having a full complement of Prison POMs, there is only one Probation Officer POM against a target of 6.5 full time equivalent. However, the national OMiC team will be using evidence, data and learning to review and develop the current model to maximise the opportunity to deliver better outcomes which will include reviewing Key Work and case management, exploring ways in which the current model can be made more flexible to better support delivery, whilst taking into consideration the different prison functions and prisoner cohorts.