Inspectors to HMP Ranby, a category C training and resettlement prison in Nottinghamshire, found that the prison failed to provide purposeful activity to inmates, despite the prison making some safety improvements. Over half of the 948 prisoners at the time of the inspection were unemployed and spending up to 23 hours a day behind their doors.
Well-resourced workshops sat empty, as did the library, and few prisoners attended classes. A substantial number of prisoners had poor English and mathematics skills but received no help to improve them, and low literacy skills were not addressed.
Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, said: “The prison must break out of its COVID-19 inertia and provide meaningful, well-planned, and structured activities.”
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However, there had been improvements across every aspect of HM Inspectorate of Prisons’ safety test, and the flow of drugs into the prison, which had been a chief cause of violence in the jail at previous inspection in 2016 and 2018, had been stemmed with improvements to perimeter security, the use of dogs, and the introduction of body scanners.
Violence had reduced significantly - assaults against fellow prisoners had reduced by almost half, and against staff by 39%. Inspectors judged the prison to have improved its safety score from ‘not sufficiently good’ to ‘good.'
Leaders struggled to provide adequate resettlement provision for Ranby’s population. The prison was out of step with its remit as a training prison with 65% of its prisoners having been transferred there for resettlement purposes.
Prisoners were also frustrated with how little they were able to communicate with their offender manager.
Mr Taylor said: “At the time of our inspection, Ranby was not operating as a category C training prison. Just being safe is not good enough, and if it is to fulfil its essential function in giving prisoners the skills, knowledge, confidence and work ethic to support them on their return to the community, then leaders urgently need to get them into the workshops and classrooms which should be a thriving part of this jail.”
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