Women who are mentally unwell and are being held at a Surrey prison are facing long delays for treatment, according to a watchdog.<\/p>\n
In its annual report, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) of HMP Downview women’s prison, which is also a Young Offenders’ Institution, said prisoners faced “lengthy delays” in being transferred to psychiatric units.<\/p>\n
The report said many of these women had to be held in segregation for their own and others’ safety.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said an independent review would aim to reduce the number of women being sent to prison.<\/p>\n
The IMB said staff in the segregation unit showed “extraordinary patience, professionalism and compassion”, but were “not trained to support such unwell prisoners”.<\/p>\n
The report, published on Wednesday, said there had been a 90% increase in acutely mentally unwell prisoners facing long delays in being transferred for treatment.<\/p>\n
It added that there were also long delays in resolving basic issues, such as providing clean bedding and allocating activities, with frustration sometimes causing challenging behaviour and self-harm among prisoners.<\/p>\n
It also highlighted an “alarmingly low” number of prisoners being released on temporary licence to go to work, and a high number of intimate relationships between prisoners being recorded, which the board said could become “flashpoints”.<\/p>\n
An MoJ spokesperson said: “The prison system this government inherited is not working for most women.<\/p>\n
“Many are victims and over half are mothers.<\/p>\n
“That’s why the Lord Chancellor welcomed the Independent Sentencing Review’s recommendations and has already established a new Women’s Justice Board to reduce the number of women in jail and the number of women’s prisons.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Women who are mentally unwell and are being held at a Surrey prison are facing long delays for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-111848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}