HMP Millsike, the country’s newest jail which opened in March 2025, has been criticised in the strongest terms by its Independent Monitoring Board (IMB). According to the IMB, the jail’s opening ‘was chaotic, with basic processes, like drawing keys, locking doors and counting prisoners, not yet established’, and that the jail suffers from serious ‘design faults’ which have been found in ‘other new prisons’ including ‘blind spots for officers on landings’, meaning that prisoners can be violent or pass contraband unobserved. This is despite the prison, which cost £400 million to build, having more than 1,500 CCTV cameras.

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To make matters worse, the jail suffers from ‘consistent staff shortages’ because ‘the remote location of the prison’ makes ‘hiring difficult’, and, in addition to this, staff are ‘inexperienced’ and uncertain about ‘regime and processes’, which affects ‘safety, security and fair treatment of prisoners’. As a result of these shortages, Millsike, originally designed to hold 1,500 prisoners, still has 350 empty cells. According to........

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