Steve Brine has spoken of 'significant challenges' facing HMP/YOI Winchester and the wider prison estate nationally following an independent report on the city prison.
The Winchester & Chandler's Ford MP spoke out after the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) at Her Majesty's Prison Winchester has published its Annual Report for the year ending 31st May 2015.
It noted that under the 'continuing strong leadership' of the Governing Governor, David Rogers, improvements have progressed from a low base a few years ago, and acknowledged the considerable external societal pressures which are reflected within the prison environment, including increased use of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) such as 'spice', and increasing violent behaviour in the community.
The report concluded that the result is that running HMP Winchester continues to be challenging, with new issues to be tackled along with others which have yet to be resolved, having been raised in previous IMB reports. These included overall staffing levels, the Personal Officer Scheme, problems with prisoners' property, the shortage of purposeful work, and late night reception of prisoners into the prison.
Steve Brine MP said: "The challenges we face across the secure estate right now are significant and Winchester is hardly immune from that. Being recognised as a 'complex' establishment was important because that, and the fact Winchester was a net-winner out of the benchmarking exercise, has brought staffing levels up. However, the relative inexperience of some new staff is rightly noted in the report as a concern.
"All of my experience tells me control and order are fundamental to prison life and the rampant use of New Psychoactive Substances is making that extremely difficult. That is just one reason why I have done so much work inside Government to get the new blanket ban legislation onto the statute book. I said in Parliament last week how this is desperately needed in Winchester as much as anywhere else and the IMB report clearly backs that up.
"The wider point I would make is that Winchester, like every prison, has too many prisoners. Until we radically reform criminal justice policy, and focus on rehabilitation as much as punishment our institutions will continue to struggle and society will continue to pay the extortionate price of this widespread state failure."
The IMB's Chairman, John Tainton, commented: "We are encouraged by the progress being made, but there remains a multiplicity of testing issues which means no letting up on the substantial work in progress by prison staff."
Steve Brine successfully moved an amendment to the Psychoactive Substances Bill in Parliament last week, to make possession of NPS inside prison an offence punishable by up to 12 further months in prison.
More information ...
Steve Brine speaks in Psychoactive Substances Bill debate