{"id":72619,"date":"2025-08-17T05:10:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T05:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/72619\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T05:10:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T05:10:49","slug":"hmp-erlestoke-prisoners-left-without-essential-medicine-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/72619\/","title":{"rendered":"HMP Erlestoke prisoners left without essential medicine – report"},"content":{"rendered":"

The report said the prison had received 584 new arrivals, compared to 316 releases, stretching the facility’s ability to cope with overcrowding.<\/p>\n

The IMB said “three planned small secure house blocks” to help increase capacity were “on hold”.<\/p>\n

It also found only 380 of 540 targeted sessions per month, during which key workers meet with prisoners, had been achieved.<\/p>\n

Laura Bell, chair of the IMB at the facility, said prison offender managers – who helped inmates prepare for release and put them in education courses which addressed their behaviour – were overloaded due to changes in release criteria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Because of all these changes to the release system, they’ve been having to do a lot of recalculation of sentences. <\/p>\n

“Lots of people will have had more than one offence, it’s a really complex bit of work, and important to get it right.<\/p>\n

“They are doing that so much that they are having less contact with their main caseload, and that’s had an impact,” she added.<\/p>\n

Ms Bell said healthcare was “a very complex problem within a prison, with a huge number of people who have massive mental health problems”.<\/p>\n

She emphasised Erlestoke had an “amazing neurodiversity manager who helps individuals and officers understand” people’s needs.<\/p>\n

The MoJ said the government had “inherited a prison system in crisis” but was reforming sentencing to “focus on reducing reoffending and cutting crime”.<\/p>\n

It added healthcare in prisons was a “matter for the NHS or private healthcare provider”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The report said the prison had received 584 new arrivals, compared to 316 releases, stretching the facility’s ability…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-72619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72619","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=72619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}