A RECRUITMENT process for a new governor at La Moye prison will begin in the coming weeks, with an appointment expected by the end of the year.
Kate Briden, Chief Officer for Justice and Home Affairs, told a Scrutiny panel that the prison was currently being run by an acting governor who oversaw the facility during an inspection by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor in November.
“We are agreed that the right thing to do is to recruit externally for a prison governor at this stage, but that will be on a three-year fixed-term contract,” she said.
Ms Briden explained this approach would give the acting governor time to gain the necessary qualifications and experience to be considered for the role in the future.
The recruitment process will include bringing external candidates to the Island for a familiarisation visit before formal interviews.
This comes after Jersey’s former prison governor Susie Richardson resigned from her role due to “frustration” with government processes and policies preventing improvement.
The Scrutiny panel also heard that HMP La Moye had not had funding for a body scanner, a security measure highlighted in the recent prison inspection report.
The report noted: “The prison had not yet received funding from the government to install a body scanner, which would help detect secreted items on prisoners and reduce the need for strip-searching.
“Because the prison did not have a body scanner to detect secreted items, all prisoners, including women, were strip-searched. The decision to do this was not always sufficiently justified or evidenced by, for example, a current and individualised risk assessment.”
Questioned on the funding issue by Scrutiny politicians and whether a request had been rejected, Ms Briden said that it was “in the pipeline”.
The panel also heard that a scheme to transfer non-Jersey residents to UK prisons had resumed after being temporarily halted. According to the inspection report, approximately 10% of Jersey’s prisoners are non-residents who had been unable to transfer to UK prisons.
Justice and Home Affairs Minister Deputy Mary Le Hegarat explained that the pause was due to there not being enough space in UK prisons rather than a “collapse” in arrangements with HM Prison and Probation Service, as the report suggested.
She said: “Ordinarily, a prisoner would request being able to move back to the UK or somewhere else. That would be facilitated. Due to the fact that the prisons in the UK are full, that is why that has not happened. It’s not that it has collapsed, it’s just basically there’s been no facility.
“In the last couple of months, it has started up again. We’ve got a number of prisoners who would like to return to the UK, to be closer to their families and jurisdictions. We will try to facilitate those as quickly as we can, because that is a benefit to the prison, to the prisoners themselves and to their wider families, and obviously for them to be rehabilitated back into society, wherever that happens to be.”
