Prisons: Good practice "not being shared"

The chief inspector of prisons has said the prison service is suffering because the private and public sectors will not work together.

Ann Owers said there was growing evidence of a reluctance to share good practice between the two sectors, because neither wants to give the other "the competitive edge".

Owers was speaking to the FT ahead of the publication of her report on the Wolds private prison near Hull.

She said she found that "if you place one sector in direct competition with the other, what tends to happen is a tendency towards hoarding of good practice rather than sharing".

And she confirmed she had serious concerns that the performance of the prison service is being undermined by the public-private sector split.

In her report, Owers criticises the Wolds prison's exclusion of a local resettlement strategy pilot which was being run by the nearby state run Everthorpe prison.

And prisoners at Wolds are currently unable to benefit from the unified prison-probation offender assessment system, which is being rolled out by government.

The system is a key plank of the government's strategy for reducing reoffending.

It was launched over the past year by the merged Prison and Probation Service to improve the quality of information on offenders, including the risks of reoffending and endangering the community.

Owers said it was unacceptable that prisoners in the private jail were not being offered the service, "given that prisoners move between private and public sector prisons, and between them and the probation service".