Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - July 2016
months. Most prisons have now migrated to a hard drive system which automatically
deletes the calls at the three month point. The inspectors also found by checking the
prison’s email inboxes and sent items folder that in a number of cases records relating to
the ‘emailaprisoner’ service had also been retained in excess of the three month period.
10.22 The final 1% of recommendations (4 recommendations) concerned prisons not
having an adequate translation strategy in place to deal with calls or correspondence in
a foreign language. This was particularly relevant to those prisons with a high proportion
of foreign national prisoners where a small number of inspections revealed that staff
were being directed to listen to a large number of calls made in foreign languages but
were not being provided with any guidance as to whether the calls should be translated.
Consequently no benefit was being derived from the monitoring which undermines the
necessity and proportionality for it as the exercise cannot meet the objective for which
monitoring was authorised.
10.23 At the end of each inspection, each prison is given an overall rating (good,
satisfactory, poor). This rating is determined by considering the total number of
recommendations made, the severity of those recommendations, and whether
recommendations made following a previous inspection had to be carried forward
because they were not achieved. In 2015 54 (73%) of prisons achieved a good rating, 8
(11%) were satisfactory, and 12 (16%) were poor. Whilst this is broadly similar with previous
years, comparisons are difficult because the prisons being inspected are not the same.
With regard to whether recommendations made following a previous inspection had to
be carried forward, 87% of prisons inspected in 2015 that received recommendations in
their previous inspection had fully achieved all or the majority of those recommendations.
10.24 A more reliable way to gauge whether compliance is improving is to compare each
prison’s level of compliance from its 2015 inspection to its previous inspection rating:
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45 inspections resulted in the level of compliance remaining the same, with
39 prisons continuing to achieve a good level of compliance, 4 satisfactory
and 2 poor.
16 inspections resulted in the prisons improving their rating, with 6 prisons
moving from satisfactory to good, 9 from poor to good, and 1 from poor to
satisfactory.
13 inspections resulted in the compliance rating worsening, with 3 prisons
moving from good to satisfactory, 7 from good to poor, and 3 from satisfactory
to poor.
10.25 The inspectors found that changes in compliance often reflect changes to the
resourcing and management of this function within the prisons (e.g. moving from a
dedicated experienced team undertaking monitoring to a duty shared amongst a greater
number of staff). Such changes can have a considerable impact in a short space of time
and reinforces the need for prison Governors to assess periodically between inspections
that the interception of prisoners’ communications is being carried out effectively.
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