G4S has been providing value for money, innovation, and social benefit within the criminal justice sector in the United Kingdom since the first private sector prison in the country was opened in 1992. Since then, expertise from around the business has been used to expand and improve our offering.
Care and Rehabilitation Services
Overview of current services
HMP Oakwood is a Category C prison providing places for up to 1,605 male prisoners. It became operational in April 2012 and offers modern facilities, access to training, education, industrial type employment, interventions and physical health and wellbeing initiatives. We offer prisoners with substance misuse issues an opportunity to safely withdraw from such behaviour on our Drug Recovery Unit.
HMP & YOI Parc is one of the largest prisons in the UK. The prison provides residents real work experience which reflects the ethics required in business. There are many opportunities for residents to gain national vocational qualifications that assist them to find work on their release.
HMP Rye Hill near Rugby, is a category ‘B’ prison that holds 625 sentenced males adults. The prison's philosophy is one of rehabilitation and actively encourages prisoners to address the causes of their offending. This is achieved by the provision of a range of Offending Behaviour Programmes and by providing appropriate employment and training opportunities that assist prisoners to find work on their release.
Oakhill Secure Training Centre is a secure facility for up to 80 young people aged between 12 and 18 years old across three house blocks. The centre provides a safe and secure environment where the young people have access to a fully equipped education centre that offers a full timetabled curriculum.
HMP Five Wells is the UK’s first purpose-built resettlement prison. Situated in Northamptonshire, the Category C prison runs with a strong focus on rehabilitation in order to break the cycle of reoffending. The prison benefits from the latest design and technology to enhance security and rehabilitation, and it fosters a purposeful environment that reflects life in the wider community.
Community Contracts is a leading provider of support and treatment services for people with unmet needs who are involved, or at risk of becoming involved, in the criminal justice system. Whether the needs centre on alcohol, substance use, mental health difficulty or a mixture of those and other challenges, our staff meet people where they are and work face-to-face to help develop stability, achieve change and build resilience.
Family Services Contracts - Invisible Walls is the established name for our family support services within the prisons and wider community. Beginning in 2008 at HMP Parc it has evolved across the G4S prisons to become a recognised standard of best practise with regards to keeping families and significant others connected during and after a custodial sentence.
Invisible Walls delivers a broad range of services including long term post release mentoring for people leaving prison, as well as supporting their children, partners, and wider family. We have developed partnerships with several hundred schools to enable children and fathers to remain in contact and actively involved in educational achievements and wellbeing. Our Family Services team also supports children and families of military veterans in our custody.
The programme was cited as an exemplar within the landmark review of children and families of prisoners by Lord Michael Farmer 2017.
For information about other prisons in the UK please visit the HM Prison & Probation Service' prison finder.
Innovation in minimising re-occurring offending
Parc Supporting Families’ (PSF) aims to support and develop innovative ways that healthy family ties can be established, maintained and enhanced whilst a family member is serving a sentence at HMP Parc.
PSF includes:
- Family Intervention Unit - a 60 bed living unit where the entire focus of the environment is upon repairing, enhancing and taking responsibility for relationships, parenting and family.
- Invisible Walls Wales – Interventions and support for prisoners and their families via Family Intervention Mentors working across prison and community for a year before and a year after release.
- Family centred visits – Opportunity for children and families maximise the engagement between the prisoner and their family on these visits in a more relaxed setting, often involving special activities and interventions.
- Children and family friendly visiting – play areas in both visits halls, push chairs, baby changing and breastfeeding facilities, helpful and sensitive staff.
- Susan Ellis Visitor’s Centre – Run by staff and volunteers from Barnardo’s and including indoor and outdoor play areas, café and separate area for vulnerable visitors.
- Parenting programmes for prisoners & family – including M-PACT, Fathers Inside, Language/Numbers & Play, Bliss for Babies, Learn Together Club, a Scouts Group, Duke of Edinburgh Leadership Programme and the Children’s Showcase.
Read our Families and Significant Others Strategy online here. You will find information about the range of support available for families and significant others at HMP & YOI Parc.
