Dean Boland
25 Nov 2015 · Coroner Louise Hunt · Birmingham and Solihull
The coroner's concerns
1. prison officers' lack of awareness of drug issues
“There was a general lack of awareness and understanding of the drugs issues in the prison by prison officers”
2. lack of multi-disciplinary drug issue discussion
“There is a lack of multi‐disciplinary approach to drug issues within the prison”
3. medicine administration lacks mouth check
“General medicine administration does not involve a check of the mouth so prisoners can easily conceal tablets to sell later”
4. insufficient cell search coverage
“Cell searches only take place for a certain number of cells each month on a random basis as prescribed by NOMS, or for targeted cells when there is sufficient intelligence”
5. lack of overnight monitoring of B wing prisoners
“Prisoners on B wing are not viewed or monitored at all overnight unless they are on an ACCT”
6. inadequate night security officer deployment
“The prison deploy a security officer to B wing at night (172 prisoners).This person is unable to interact with prisoners and is only there to answer call bells”
Responses
2015-0468-Response-by-NOMS.pdf ↗· Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Stated action · 31 January 2016
“Following the inquest, training on supervising the administration of opiate substitution medication has been completed. with detox unit staff and drug awareness training is scheduled for completion by 31 January. 2016.”