AT a time when prisons are in the news for being full to bursting point and for failing in one of their most basic duties of rehabilitating prisoners, the annual Independent Monitoring Report on Frankland prison is pretty positive.

Frankland is a category A prison, containing some of the toughest inmates, and is operating very close to its capacity of 852.

Although there are issues, the report tells of satisfactory conditions and outcomes, with inmates involved in charity fund-raising, and with their GCSE English results being reported in a national newspaper because these “hard to reach” prisoners were out-performing candidates on the outside.

This is so important. Prison is a place to lock offenders to protect the public but, as those offenders will one day be released, it must also effect a turnaround on their behaviour.

The report gives a clue, though, of the tough scenarios that the staff face. There’s an account of a prisoner on a roof doing “significant damage to property” but fortunately without harming anyone, but two officers were hospitalised after inhaling a powerful drug, fentanyl, that they found in a pen in a prisoner’s cell. It is a major concern that drugs are so readily available – it is impossible to rehabilitate anyone if they are using a drug 50 times stronger than heroin.

And then there are underlying issues that don’t seem to be addressed. The report talks of regular breakdowns in the kitchen, causing expensive problems, and of such poor heating in the workshops that in a cold spell, the workshops are closed and the prisoners returned to their cells for the day.

With a wearied frustration, the report says that both these issues are long term and that “the situation has not improved in the reporting year”.

Prisons get a bad press but this one appears to be trying its hardest, and its efforts would be assisted by some investment.