HMP LANCASTER CASTLE Prison Regime Info

UNLOCKING TIMES

ASSOCIATION

HEALTH & SPORTS

Badminton
Circuit Training
Over 50s
Remedial
Soft Tennis
Volleyball
 

LIBRARY

Weekdays depending on activity

FAITH

Every prison has a Chaplaincy department managed by a Co-ordinating Chaplain and supported by admin staff, other Chaplains and ‘Sessional Chaplains’ (faith leaders who visit for specific services or sessions). The Chaplaincy is considered an important part of the prison structure. When a prisoner arrives at a prison they are usually seen by a Chaplain within 24 hours and are invited to register as a specific religion (if they haven’t already done so) and can change their declared religion at any time.

The Chaplaincy does far more than just pastoral care; they often are able to lend radios, musical instruments and typewriters; they may take part in Sentence Planning and are available as a ‘listening ear’ and are able, sometimes, to help with domestic problems. Most Chaplaincies run various courses and activities which may or may not have a religious theme. Every prisoner has the right to follow their religious practices and attend Chapel for services pertaining to their declared faith (even when segregated).

The Chaplaincy are able to organise faith activities for all main religions (as recognised by the Prison Service; this does not, at present include Rastafarian as a specific religion) and contact faith representatives to visit individual or groups of prisoners for the purpose of religious activities. The chaplaincy can also intercede on matters of religious dress, diet and artefacts. A full list of permitted artefacts can be found in the Glossary Section under Religious Artefacts.

You can contact the Chaplaincy by letter or by telephoning the main prison number and asking to speak to the Chaplaincy. The Chaplaincy works as part of the prison and cannot, therefore, guarantee confidentiality (they can explain this to you in detail). Prisoners can contact the Chaplaincy in person or by Application.

Chaplaincy Statement of Purpose (HMPS)
The Chaplaincy is committed to serving the needs of prisoners, staff and religious traditions by engaging all human experience. We will work collaboratively, respecting the integrity of each tradition and discipline. We believe that faith and the search for meaning directs and inspires life, and are committed to providing sacred spaces and dedicated teams to deepen and enrich human experience. We contribute to the care of prisoners to enable them to lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release.

The Co-ordinating Chaplain at Lancaster Castle is: Vacant

Full-time Anglican and Catholic Chaplains. Visiting Methodist Chaplain. Visiting Imam.

There are no specific facilities for other faiths but there is a sacred space which can be used by any faith as demand requires. All requests are considered by the Chaplain and visitors for any faith can be brought in.
 

HEALTHCARE

Lancaster Castle's Health Care Centre has type one status. There is nursing cover eight hours per day - weekdays, four hours per day - weekends. The Doctor visits two and a half hours per day Monday to Friday.

NHS Healthcare Information for Lancaster Castle

Prison Healthcare Manager: Karon Brown
Tel: 01524 565 284

PCT: North Lancashire Primary Care Trust
North West Strategic Health Authority

Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS)
PALS is there to help when you need advice, or wish to make a complaint. As a patient, relative or carer PALS provide confidential advice and support, helping you to sort out any concerns that you may have about any aspect of your NHS care.

The service aims to:
• advise and support patients, their families and carers
• provide information on NHS services
• listen to your concerns, suggestions or queries
• help sort out problems quickly on your behalf

PALS acts independently when handling patient and family concerns, liaising with staff, managers and where appropriate, relevant organisations to negotiate prompt solutions. If necessary they can also refer patients and families to specific local or national-based support agencies.

Contact Information

Tel: 01253 655588/89
Email: mailto:pals@bfwhospitals.nhs.uk

There is also a Dental Helpline for ALL NHS dental enquiries: 01702 226668
 

EDUCATION

EDUCATION PROVIDER
The Manchester College
The Manchester College, Offender Learning Directorate, Fielden Compus, Burlow Manor Road M1 3HB
Tel: 0800 068 8585

Career Information & Advice Services (CIAS)
Working Links
Head office: Unicorn House, Bromley, Kent BR1 1NX
Tel: 020 8212 8255
 

Classes include;

Crafts
English
First Aid
Key Skills
Language
Life and Social Skills
Literacy
Maths
Music
Numeracy
Open University
 

Peer Mentoring. Level 2. National Open College Network (NOCN) accredited:
This is a new course, open to prisoners who have completed the AA’s 12 step programme and wish to mentor others undertaking drug and alcohol programmes.
 

OFSTED INSPECTION

OFSTED inspect education establishments from schools to colleges to prisons. They inspect education facilities within prisons and have inspected HMP Lancaster Castle

OFSTED NUMBER: 52298
Last Inspection Date: 01/10/2007
To read their report click here
 

VOCATIONAL TRAINING

Catering
Gardening
Gym Instructor
Industrial Cleaning
Laundry
Painting and Decorating
Personal Trainer and Food Hygiene
Professional Cookery
Sports Studies
 

CURRENT WAGES

OFFENCE FOCUSED COURSES

The prison offers a twelve step Drug Rehabilitation Programme with Pre-admission Core and After care phases. The programme can cater for 36 prisoners. Voluntary Drug testing is also available.

P-ASRO
 

RESETTLEMENT

Resettlement Services comprise prisoner resettlement needs assessment and subsequent casework in employment, job training, further/continuing education and in benefits entitlements through partnership with Job Centre Plus.

Prisoner accommodation needs are assessed and services delivered by both Resettlement Unit Casework and NACRO staff. The Prison Service Plus team similarly provide all the above services for those prisoners assessed as suitable for the project.

Through the services of the Resettlement Development Officer, Lancaster Castle also has in place a developing Employer Engagement Strategy which seeks to provide employment opportunities for prisoners in the Lancashire area by working in partnership with willing employers. 

They also emphasise the significance of families in the successful resettlement of prisoners and to this end we have in place a family engagement strategy which seeks to furnish prisoners' families with comprehensive regime and visits information, telephone advice/help line and induction in sentence planning and post-programme case conferencing

FAMILY DAYS

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

PRISON PERFORMANCE
Ministry of Justice Performance Rating for this prison: 4
This is on a scale from 1 (serious concerns) to 4 (Exceptional) and is worked out by the Ministry of Justice taking into account 34 criteria such as overcrowding, purposeful activities etc. A score of 3 is considered a good performance. Published quarterly.

Average weekly hours of Purposeful Activity: 23.8
This figure is supplied by each prison to the Prison Service. Actual hours are usually dependent on activities etc. and should be taken as the maximum time either in workshops or education over a whole week.

Both of these figures are published retrospectively by the MoJ and HMPS and may have changed since the figures were published but they give a simple comparison between prisons.
 

Parliamentary Information
CONSTITUENCY: Lancaster and Fleetwood
MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative)

Prisoners may write to either their ‘Home MP’ or the MP in whose constituency their current prison lies.
The address to write to is:
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA
 

Drugs Strategy

Detoxification is done prior to allocation as part of the area strategy. The Prison Service CARATS scheme is accessible by all prisoners. It provides advice, support, treatment referral and aftercare planning. We hold regular AA and NA meetings at Lancaster Castle.

The prison offers a twelve step Drug Rehabilitation Programme with Pre-admission Core and After care phases. The programme can cater for 36 prisoners. Voluntary Drug testing is also available.

PASRO, a twenty session Cognitive Behaviour programme focusing on prisoners who have had to deal with substance misuse is accessible by prisoners at Lancaster Castle.
Programmes are delivered by a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency team. These include Lifeline, Drug Agency, Inward House Projects, Prison Officers, Probation, NA and AA. With the development of the Drugs Intervention Programme, Lancaster Castle is an integral part of all drug treatment pathways.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP)

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons for England and Wales (HMI Prisons) is an independent inspectorate which reports on conditions for, and treatment of, those in prisons, young offender institutions and immigration detention facilities. They provide independent scrutiny of the conditions for and treatment of prisoners and other detainees, promoting the concept of 'healthy prisons' in which staff work effectively to support prisoners and detainees to reduce reoffending or achieve other agreed outcomes.

HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMCIP) is appointed from outside the Prison Service, for a term of five years. The Chief Inspector reports to Ministers on the treatment of prisoners and conditions in prisons in England and Wales.

The Inspectorate’s programme of inspection is based on a mixture of chronology and risk assessment. Full inspections run on a five or three year cycle; all unannounced follow-up inspections run on a risk-assessed basis.

Full inspections
Prison establishments holding adults and young adults are inspected once every five years. Establishments holding juveniles are inspected every three years. This type of inspection lasts for at least one week. The Inspectorate collects information from many sources, including the people who work there, the people who are imprisoned or detained there, and visitors or others with an interest in the establishment. Inspection findings are reported back to the establishment’s managers. Reports are published within 16 weeks of inspection. The establishment is then expected to produce an action plan, based on the recommendations made within the report, within a short period following publication.

Full follow-up inspections
Follow-up inspections are unannounced and proportionate to risk. In full follow-up inspections inspectors assess progress made and undertake in-depth analysis of areas of serious concern identified in the previous full inspection, particularly on safety and respect.

Short follow-up inspections
Short follow-up inspections are also unannounced and conducted where the previous full inspection and their intelligence systems suggest that there are comparatively fewer concerns.

Escort inspections
Three escort inspections are conducted every year.

Pre-inspection visit
One month prior to each full announced inspection, an inspector will visit the establishment to plan the inspection and request a range of preliminary information. In addition, researchers will attend to conduct a confidential survey of a representative proportion of the prisoner population. Results from the prisoner survey are provided for inspectors prior to the inspection and constitute an important source of evidence.

The inspection
All inspections are conducted against the Inspectorate's published inspection criteria, 'Expectations'. Expectations' are based on international human rights standards, as well as Prison Service Orders and Standards, and over all issues considered essential to the safe, respectful and purposeful treatment of prisoners in custody and their effective resettlement.
'Expectations' is the document which sets out the detailed criteria HMI Prisons uses to appraise and inspect prisons. These criteria are used to examine every area of prison life, from reception to resettlement, including;

• safer custody
• health services
• good order
• work
• diversity
• resettlement

The concept of a healthy prison is one that was first set out by the World Health Organisation, but it has been developed by this Inspectorate, and is now widely accepted as a definition of what ought to be provided in any custodial environment. It rests upon four key tests:

• safety: prisoners, even the most vulnerable, are held safely
• respect: prisoners are treated with respect for their human dignity
• purposeful activity: prisoners are able, and expected, to engage in activity that is likely to benefit them
• resettlement: prisoners are prepared for release into the community, and helped to reduce the likelihood of reoffending

Post-inspection action
Inspection reports are published within 16 weeks of the inspection. Prior to publication, the Prison Service (or whoever is responsible for the establishment) is invited to correct any factual inaccuracies within the report. The establishment is then expected to produce an action plan, based on the recommendations made in the report, within two months of publication. A progress report on the action plain is produced after a further 12 months.
 

HMCIP REPORT
Last Inspection by HMCIP: October 2007 (Announced Full Inspection)

They said:

“HMP Lancaster Castle is a small category C male training prison situated within a medieval castle. It claims to be the oldest penal establishment in the world and, despite ongoing refurbishment, it remains a challenge to provide a modern training prison in such antiquated accommodation. Over recent years, the prison has sensibly sought to fill a niche role as a specialist drug treatment facility for the North West. However, at the time of this full announced inspection its principal drug programme had been temporarily suspended, reducing the prison’s resettlement focus and re-emphasising some of its other frailties, particularly the lack of work and training.

“Lancaster Castle remained a very safe prison. Arrangements for first days in custody were good and there were comprehensive procedures to prevent suicide and self-harm. Anti-bullying arrangements needed to be made more robust, but there were few problems with drugs, and prisoners generally felt safe. Staff rarely had to resort to the use of force and the segregation unit was well run. Surprisingly, for a prison with an ambition to specialise in drug treatment, there were no detoxification services.

“Accommodation was of low quality, with poor ventilation in cells, inadequate showers and a kitchen that was unfit for purpose. Matters were not helped by a general lack of cleanliness. Staff–prisoner relationships were relaxed, supported by a good incentives and earned privileges scheme, but the personal officer scheme was basic and was not sufficiently linked to sentence planning and offender management. Healthcare struggled to provide a decent service in inappropriate conditions and we had concerns about both dentistry and pharmacy, particularly arrangements for dispensing medication.

“Once again we were perplexed to find that the proportion of prisoners from black and minority ethnic backgrounds remained much lower than at other training prisons in the North West. We raised the same issue at our last inspection and recommended that the area manager investigate the matter. This did not appear to have happened. Given that managers at Lancaster Castle were themselves concerned that the prison was perceived as racist by black and minority ethnic prisoners at feeder prisons, who then refused to move there, it is essential that the matter is properly investigated by the Prison Service’s national Race Equality Action Group and any necessary remedial action put in hand.

“Prisoners spent too long in their cells for a training prison. There were sufficient activity places for the current population, but as numbers had been reduced to allow the refurbishment work to take place, there would be insufficient places once the empty accommodation was refilled. There was good quality education and some vocational opportunities were available in the workshops, but it was disappointing that prisoner attendance was often inexplicably low. Resettlement provision at Lancaster Castle was reasonable, with a newly- established offender management unit and a number of useful interventions and reintegration services. However, the suspension of the 12-step drug treatment programme, which had been the centrepiece of its resettlement strategy, had left a significant gap. This had not been helped by the national population crisis which had meant prisoners were being allocated simply to fill available spaces, rather than because Lancaster Castle could address their particular risks or needs.

“It is of little surprise that this inspection has identified the inherent frailties of placing a modern training prison in a medieval castle. Accommodation is poor and training and work limited. There is also an urgent need to explain the under-representation of black and minority ethnic prisoners. Nevertheless, there are still notable strengths at Lancaster Castle, particularly the impressive levels of safety. If the prison is able to return rapidly to its niche role as a specialist drug treatment facility for the North West, it can regain an appropriate focus and some of its other weaknesses will be partially mitigated.”

Anne Owers January 2008
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons

Click here to read the full report

Independent Monitoring Board

By law every prison and immigration removal centre must have an Independent Monitoring Board. IMBs in prisons derive their responsibilities from the Prison Act 1952 (Section 6). Prison Rules dealing with IMDs are numbers; 74 to 80

IMBs were known as ‘Boards of Visitors’ and are still referred to in the legislation under their old titles, although this is likely to change in the near future.

The Independent Monitoring Board for each establishment is made up of independent and unpaid volunteers from the local area. They monitor the day-to-day life in the establishment and ensure that proper standards of care and decency are maintained. Members have unrestricted access to all areas of the prison at all times and can talk to any prisoner they wish, out of sight and hearing of a members of staff. They visit all areas such as; kitchens, workshops, accommodation blocks, recreation areas, healthcare centre and chaplaincy.

If a prisoner or detainee has an issue that they have been unable to resolve through the usual internal channels, they can place a confidential request to see a member of the IMB. Problems might include concerns over lost property, visits from family or friends, special religious or cultural requirements, or even serious allegations such as bullying. In addition, if something serious happens at the prison, for example a riot or a death in custody, IMB members may be called in to attend and observe the way in which it is handled.

IMB members sample food, can attend adjudications and should visit people held in the segregation unit. They must also be kept informed on such issues as the use of restraints.

The IMB meets regularly, usually once per month, and has an elected Chair and Vice Chair. Members work together as a team to raise any matters of concern and to keep an independent eye on the prison.

Click Here for IMB Website

Click Here for the latest published Annual IMB Report for this prison
 

Information in this section has been provided, primarily, by the prison. This information is supplemented with information from the various prison service websites; Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons; information and quotes from recent IMB/Visiting Committee reports; and specialist departments within the Prison Service, government, and regional assemblies/parliaments. Performance and population data is provided by the Ministry of Justice.

Some of the data is published retrospectively: IMBs/Visiting Committees publish their reports up to 6 months after the end of the reporting period and at different times throughout the year, HMCIP publish their reports up to 6 months after the inspection. Population and performance figures can be up to three months out of date.

The information on our website is regularly checked but if you have additional information, or if you believe that any of our information is incorrect, please click on ‘Contact’, below.

Updated: September 2010