Adrian Usher publishes first Annual Report highlighting significant changes made by the PPO
11 July 2024 – Today Prisons and Probation Ombudsman Adrian Usher has published his first Annual Report covering the year 2023-2024.
Adrian said: “I was very proud to be selected to lead the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and so I wanted to reflect this in my first Annual Report.
Our readers will see that this report is different from previous years as I believe its focus should be on what we have delivered”.
The 2023/24 report therefore highlights the tangible differences the PPO has made to operational delivery and safety for those services in our remit.
Some of the changes highlighted include:
- refreshing our vision and values, which has informed:
- being more transparent by:
- publishing summaries of upheld complaint investigations
- publishing the names of fatal incident investigations we are carrying out earlier
- streamlining natural cause death investigation reporting
- the launch of Independent Prisoner Complaint Investigations
- making fewer, but more strategic recommendations to institutions
We also highlight that there was an increase in self-inflicted deaths (104, 13 more than last year). This is sadly the highest number of self-inflicted deaths since 2016/17.
Key statistics from 2023/24:
Complaints investigations:
- we received 4,575 complaints
- 4,345 of these were about prisons, 134 more than last year
- The most common complaint categories were:
- Property (27%)
- Staff behaviour (10%)
- Administration (8%)
Fatal incident investigations:
- We started investigations into 360 deaths
- 292 of these were in prisons, and 53 of these occurred post-release from establishments (within 14 days)
- We made 718 recommendations to services and establishments:
- 281 were about healthcare provision
- 84 were about general administration
- 79 were about suicide and self-harm prevention
- 74 were about emergency response