Complaint investigation summaries

The prisoner complained that his civil legal action against the prison was not handled correctly, and the prison responded to it as a complaint, rather than following civil procedure. Our investigation found that the prison failed to respond in line with pre action protocol and did not forward the letter to their litigation team as required by policy.

Whilst at Wormwood Scrubs, the prisoner was issued an IEP warning, without any prior verbal or written warning. He did not know that this had occurred until he had moved to HMP Belmarsh. He wanted the warning removed from his record. Following our investigation, Wormwood Scrubs agreed that the IEP warning was not correctly issued.

The prisoner complained that staff asked him to open his letter to the Prisoners’ Advice Service (PAS) in their presence without reasonable grounds. During our investigation the prison informed us that since receiving the complaint, this practice had stopped and a notice to staff had been issued making sure they knew that prisoners should not be made to open legally privileged mail in their presence, without reasonable grounds to suspect the letter contained an illicit enclosure.

Two young people (separately) complained about the fee they were charged when they damaged a laptop. They stated they were aware that others had caused the same damage to laptops and been charged a lesser fee.

The prisoner complained about his Rule 39 letters being opened and photocopied by the prison. Our investigation established there were two Rule 39 letters from the Legal Ombudsman which were opened in error, and a letter from Solicitors, which was copied in error. The prison claimed that some of the prisoner’s envelopes were superficially damaged by search dogs, however the checking process has since been changed to prevent this happening in future.

The prisoner requested a copy of security information used by the prison as part of his re-categorisation review. This information was not provided despite there being no personal or sensitive information contained within. Our investigation found that the prison did not follow policy, and if information is critical to the categorisation decision, the information should be shared with the prisoner.

The prisoner complained that his employment was being cancelled on a regular basis, resulting in him being locked in his cell all day. Our investigation found that this was the case, and the prison confirmed that they were not always able to fulfil their contractual obligations to regime, due to staffing numbers.

The prisoner complained about being removed from his job in the servery. Our investigation found that the prisoner had been given an unofficial trial period of work in the wing servery, which was not authorised by the Activities Unit. When the Activities Unit became aware of his unofficial trial appointment, he was removed from the position.

The prisoner complained that staff had told him he would remain on basic as long as he refused to locate. Our investigation found that while refusal to locate could be viewed as a factor in deciding to keep a prisoner at basic IEP level, it would still be necessary to conduct regular reviews, and to certainly review the decision within the first 7 days and every 14 days thereafter, for those subject to ACCT.

The prisoner complained that his category A review had initially been delayed because of COVID, however subsequent reviews were sequenced after that delayed review which had a cumulative delay on his progression.