Illicit drugs are the single most destabilising factor across the entire adult prison estate, according to the annual report from the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB). At one prison, HMP High Down in Surrey, IMB members recorded 13 drug-related medical emergencies in a single day.
As well as life-threatening medical incidents, drugs are also fuelling violence, debt, intimidation and self-isolation, the document states, with medical emergencies alone ‘placing extreme strain on healthcare and operational staff’. Even when prisons did manage to reduce levels of drug use, IMB members ‘often observed spikes in debt-related violence and anxiety-driven self‑harm, as drug dealers sought to collect their debts, destabilising regimes further’, the report says.
IMB are statutory bodies made up of unpaid volunteers appointed to monitor the treatment and welfare of prisoners. Earlier this year Inside Time magazine reported that they were to be merged with HM Inspectorate of Prisons in a bid to cut costs.
The annual report’s findings present a ‘consistent and deeply troubling picture’ across the country, it states, with prisoners living in ‘increasingly unsafe and demoralising’ conditions and failures once regarded as serious becoming normalised. Many of the gravest issues mirrored ‘those raised repeatedly in IMB annual reports over the past decade’, it says, with long-standing failures ‘compounded’ rather than resolved and the same problems persisting ‘with striking frequency’. This raised ‘unavoidable questions about effectiveness, accountability and the system’s capacity to correct its course’.
The findings also echo those of other bodies, with HM Inspectorate of Prisons warning that drugs were now undermining ‘every aspect’ of prison life and the National Audit Office saying that the prison service had been far too slow in responding to the ‘substantial, increasing and rapidly changing’ threats posed by drugs in the prison estate.
Alongside the drugs crisis, mental health needs were also far outstripping available support, the IMB report continues, with building maintenance also ‘actively making prisons less safe, less humane, and less able to function’. Cuts to education and training, meanwhile, were compounding instability, frustration and poor mental health. ‘The lived experience of custody is increasingly marked by dwindling opportunity for meaningful engagement, heightened anxiety and fading hope, calling into question whether headline assurances of improvement align with the reality on the ground,’ the report says.
The bleakness of the overall picture ‘matters because it is felt every day by people in custody’, said IMB interim national chair Jane Leech. ‘Poor conditions, limited regimes and unsafe environments damage mental and physical wellbeing, undermine rehabilitation, and erode dignity. They also affect public safety, the likelihood of reoffending, staff retention, and trust in the justice system. For both adults and children in custody, the prevailing experience is not one of progress, but of stagnation and decline. IMBs’ findings suggest that unless there is a decisive shift away from denial, short-term fixes and rhetorical reassurance, prisons and YOIs will continue to deteriorate, not through sudden collapse, but through the steady normalisation of failure.’
National annual report 2025 adult prisons, young offender institutions and immigration detention available here