HMP Dartmoor
was first built because overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of fresh air on
the floating hulks off Plymouth were causing so many prisoners of war to die on
them. 220 years on, Parliament’s spending watchdog has roundly condemned a decision
to keep the prison open despite the prison service knowing for years that it’s “choked
with radon gas with all the health risks that entailed”. According to the Health
Security Agency (HSA) , if people breathe in high levels of radon over long
periods of time this exposure can lead to damage to the sensitive cells of our
lungs which increases the risk of lung cancer.
The prison has
lain empty for 16 months pending a decision on exactly what’s needed to protect
those who will live and work there from those risks- and whether it’s worth
fixing at all.
The Public Accounts
Committee (PAC) have concentrated their fire on the MoJ’s poor negotiation of
the lease extension with the Duchy of Cornwall who own the prison.
But there
are surely lessons to learn too in the way the health risks to prisoners and staff
have been identified, monitored and mitigated since raised levels of radon were
first detected- certainly in 2020, maybe before. There’s not a clear timeline
with many of the documents shared with MPs by the MoJ unpublished because of alleged
commercial sensitivities.
Dartmoor’s
local monitoring board (IMB) has reported that after the 2020 monitoring found
staff might have experienced elevated exposures to radon, “due to regrettable
delays in escalating the issue in the MoJ” internal mitigations were not put in
place for two years. The monitoring of residential wings didn’t start until
2023. In that year Inspectors
found prisoners at Dartmoor were often not allowed outside more than twice a
week, which on the face of it could mean an increased level of exposure to any excess
radon in cells.
As the IMB
put it, “after seven months of decanting, pausing, decanting and recanting”, significantly
higher radon levels found in wing atriums led to the prison being closed.
Back in 2015
the HSA
recommended that “If you have high levels of radon at home, you
should take action”. Its not clear
that the prison service did so or did as much as they should at Dartmoor.
Meanwhile, another
parliamentary committee has revealed “a deeply worrying picture” of HMP
Millsike , which opened last March. Local monitors have reported on severe
safety concerns, some prisoners spending up to 23 hours per day in their cell, and
high levels of self-harm. The Justice committee say rigorous scrutiny is
necessary to ensure prisoners are treated safely, fairly and humanely during
the critical early years of operation.
As the
Dartmoor debacle shows, that’s just as true of prisons in the later stages of
their life.
