A Wolverhampton prison has been found to have worsening violence, drug-taking, and self-inflicted deaths than it did at its previous inspection three years ago. The latest inspection by the prisons watchdog found it had the tenth highest rate of self-inflicted deaths in the entire male prison estate and illegal drugs were ‘readily available’ to prisoners.

Inspectors also found 56% of prisoners said that it was easy to obtain illicit drugs compared with 33% at the previous inspection. This was partly due to the increased use of drones and the ‘physical vulnerability’ of the site. Prisoners also told them that illegal drugs, and the debt associated with their use, were the main drivers of violence in the prison. Despite this, there is currently ‘no comprehensive action plan’ for tackling violence between prisoners, and leaders have done ‘little analysis’ to understand its causes.

HMP Featherstone is a Category C training prison but opportunities for work and training were found to be ‘too limited’, with many prisoners locked up for over 21 hours a day with nothing meaningful to do.

The chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, did say on releasing this latest report that HMP Featherstone showed ‘pockets of good practice’, but of 13 recommendations made at the previous inspection, only three have been fully addressed.