page_title: HM Prison Swaleside
section_title: The prison today
hierarchical_section_title: HM Prison Swaleside / The prison today
caption_attribution_description: English: Horticultural unit at HMP Swaleside Swaleside is a Category B Training Prison and has room for 775 prisoners, more than half of them serving life sentences. Part of the training regimen consists of horticultural and agricultural activities.
context_page_description: HM Prison Swaleside is a Category B men's prison, located close to the village of Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. Swaleside forms part of the Sheppey prisons cluster, which also includes HMP Elmley and HMP Standford Hill. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.
context_section_description: Swaleside is a Category B prison for adult males, more than half of them serving life sentences. It is a main centre prison for prisoners in the first stage of a life sentence. The prison has a high minority ethnic population of between 30–40%, and a similar number of foreign national prisoners.
  Education at the prison is provided by Canterbury College, with courses ranging from basic education to Open University level. Employment activities for inmates include industrial cleaning, engineering, commercially run industries workshops, horticultural and agricultural activities.
  A high proportion of prisoners surveyed said they had felt unsafe at Swalesdale.  Many also said getting alcohol and drugs was easy there.
  A 2016 HM Inspectorate of Prisons report stated the prison was dangerous with far too much violence.  Mike Rolfe of the Prison Officers Association said: 
  What you have is a really unhelpful mix around the prison estate of prisoner-staff relationships now, where staff numbers have been cut so that staff don't feel confident or empowered to be able to do their role. That's led to a breakdown of the relationship.
    
  Rolfe added a good relation was needed where prison officers could encourage prisoners to work or study and help prisoners turn their lives round.  Rolfe has also described Swaleside as "a particularly difficult place to work" because of an "acute staff shortfall" and high levels of violence.
  Former Swaleside governor, John Podmore, said prisons were "undoubtedly dangerous" and added:
  We should be sending fewer people to jail in absolute terms but we need to be looking at who we are locking up, why we are locking them up and how we deal with the way in which they are offending against society. We need a much more subtle approach than what we have at the moment,
    
  There was a riot at Swaleside in December 2016 when prisoners took over a wing for a time. Reportedly at least nine prisoners from Birmingham Prison were transferred to Swalesdale. There were also riots at Bedford Prison, Lewes Prison and Birmingham Prison.
caption: Horticultural unit at HMP Swaleside
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