Norwich (HM Prison) - History

History

Norwich opened as a prison in 1887, on the site of the Britannia Barracks (the former home of the Royal Norfolk Regiment). The prison has had a variety of roles over the years, but today acts as a prison for Category B & C inmates.

In January 2003 a report from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons severely criticised Norwich Prison for factors including poor cleanliness and the failure of its anti-drug and anti-bullying programmes. The report also criticised the lack of work and education opportunities at the jail for inmates.

In November 2004 the Prison Reform Trust criticised levels of overcrowding at Norwich Prison. The trust stated that nearly half of all single cells at the jail here holding two prisoners, and inmates were spending too much time locked up in their cells.

At around this time Norwich became the only prison in England and Wales to have a unit exclusively for elderly male prisoners (mainly serving life sentences). This has meant that a number of high-profile elderly prisoners have been held at HMP Norwich in recent years.

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