Inspector hails 'remarkable' improvement at HMP Aylesbury after category change threw jail into turmoil

A chief prison inspector has hailed the improvements carried out by staff at HMP Aylesbury following a recent inspection.

Published this morning (3 October), a new report has found substantial improvements have been carried out over the past year.

Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons, said: “We were worried about Aylesbury after the last inspection, but the amount of change the governor and his team have achieved in such a short time is remarkable. Many prisons are grappling with the same issues that Aylesbury faces, and this should give hope that real, tangible improvement is possible when a team is really determined to succeed. The challenge now will be for them to stay on this path. Many of the prisoners I spoke to were appreciative of the improvements to the jail.”

The inspector’s worries related to issues discovered when the prison was last assessed.

A report published in March found the prison had been “thrown into chaos” since it was recategorised. Previously, the prison was a Young Offenders' Institute, and the shift to make it a place for prisoners whose escape risk is considered to be low but who cannot be trusted in open conditions, had caused a slew of issues.

Inspector Taylor felt that inmates were at risk, and so was the public due to the lack of rehabilitation resources at the site. He also described staffing issues as “extreme”, when discussing the earlier reports.

Work to reduce reoffending did not reflect the prison’s new population. Most of it still related to high-risk, long-term young adults, who now made up only 23 per cent of the population.

His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons states that in nine months the Governor has transformed the goings on inside the jail.

Highlighting how changes to how staff are deployed means prisoners are spending longer outside of their cells. The report states that 75 per cent of men now spend more than eight hours out of their cells on a weekday. Whereas in 2022, a previous report found that 40 per cent of men ad less than one hour out of their cells each day.

Inspectors, who visited the institute in late August, found that unemployment at the jail was down from 40 per cent to 25 per cent, with plans to improve the figure further.

There were still not enough places for all prisoners to attend education, training or work full time, and some health concerns remained, according to the report.

Inspectors focused on 10 areas of concern which had been raised previously by assessors. In nine of 10 categories the prison was found to have made progress. Insufficient progress has been made in setting up educational pathways for prisoners, but reasonable or good progress had been made to address all the other concerns raised in previous reviews.

Good progress has been made in improving the prisoners’ health care and time outside, the report found.

Reasonable progress has been made to address staff shortages, the use of data, study time of inmates, and training standards for vocational work, it stated.