‘Poor relations’ blamed for three nights of rioting at Moorlands Prison

Moorland prison, which holds more than 400 men and young offenders, suffered significant damage during riots last November which led to a significant loss of prison places.

Inspectors, who surveyed inmates shortly before the disturbances and visited the prison afterwards, found very poor staff-prisoner relationships, a failure to use intelligence to identify trends, and weak resettlement provision for offenders.

Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, said that when put together these problems “threatened the prison’s ability to hold prisoners safely and securely while working to reduce the likelihood of their reoffending on release”.

“Although this report does not explain why the disturbance took place - and certainly does not excuse it - it does describe what was happening in the prison before and after those events,” he said.

One in three prisoners surveyed felt threatened and intimidated by staff and the culture was “too punitive and restrictive”, with “insufficient attempt to tackle any underlying issues”, he said.

Almost two out of three incidents in which force was used involved young offenders, despite the fact they made up just one in three of the prison population, and there was no way of confirming that the planned use of force was carried out properly.

Mr Hardwick went on: “Our concerns about the safety of some prisoners reflected a more significant worry about staff-prisoner relationships in general.

“Prisoner perceptions of relationships were poor and our own observations bore out some of these concerns.

“We saw little positive interaction between staff and prisoners at key times.”