Investigatory Powers Commissioner ’s Annual Report 2019

15. Prisons

Overview
15.1

Prisons are unique in our oversight because they are governed by different rules and
legislation than apply to the other authorities we oversee. We inspect individual prisons as
well as Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), the Northern Ireland Prisons
Service (NIPS) and the Scottish Prison Service (SPS). We consider engagement with HMPPS
to be critical to establishing and maintaining compliance across England and Wales; this has
allowed us to address key issues centrally and to support the coordinated implementation
of improvements across the prison estate in recent years.

15.2

In previous reports we have published statistics for prisons ratings, designating all prisons
as ‘good’, ‘satisfactory’, or ‘poor’ for compliance. This reflected the way that our Inspectors
were rating inspections for prisons only. On review, we found that the basis of these ratings
was not robust and so have moved prisons onto a similar model to our other inspections.
This means that no overall rating is used, but we consider the compliance of each prison
and authority in relation to each relevant provision in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016
(IPA), Codes of Practice (CoP) and the Prison Rules 1999 (or equivalent in the devolved
administrations). This methodology still enables us to identify poor performing authorities
and to conduct follow-up inspections to investigate a specific issue, as necessary. In 2019
we conducted 125 prisons inspections.

Scottish Prison Service
15.3

On 16 April 2019, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC), the Cabinet Secretary for
Justice and the Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Prison Service reached agreement
that the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO) would implement a prison
inspection regime of the Scottish Prison Service. IPCO would assess compliance with the
legislation and procedures governing the use of interception of communications under the
provisions of the IPA, the Prisons (Scotland) Act 1989, The Prisons and Young Offenders
Institutions (Scotland) Rules 2011 and the Scottish Prison Rules (Telephones) Direction
2011. Inspections of all 15 Scottish Prisons took place between October 2019 and February
2020. These inspections will now occur on a yearly basis. Overall, we found that there was a
good and consistent level of compliance.

Findings
15.4

We identified a significant decrease in the use of directed surveillance and authorised
covert human intelligence sources (CHIS) across the prison estate during 2019, as shown
in Figure 21 below. The decline in the use of directed surveillance reflects an increase in
England and Wales of the use of Prison Rule 50A which allows for the overt monitoring of
prisoners using CCTV. The management of rule 50A applications and authorisations now
forms part of the IPCO inspection process for individual prisons.

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