Section three The use of force and restraint Prisons In Northern Ireland, both CJINI and the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBNI) made restraint-related recommendations this year. For the women and young male offenders held at Hydebank Wood, CJINI found that previous recommendations that all staff should receive refresher training in control and restraint techniques had not been achieved. Only just under half the staff had received refresher training in the previous 12 months. The failure to train sufficient female staff had resulted in an unacceptable situation where a male officer was involved in the strip search of a woman under restraint. However, other previous CJINI recommendations had been achieved, and governance arrangements had improved. The IMB for Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre has expressed concern about the inappropriate use of restraint on young prisoners deemed to be at risk of selfharm. The IMB felt that the use of restraint on such prisoners could exacerbate their situation, and recommended that restraint only be used on at-risk prisoners in very exceptional circumstances. senior managers to quality assure restraint documentation. HMIP found during its inspection of Send that one woman had remained handcuffed to a female officer during a hospital appointment. The cuffing continued throughout an intimate examination and while the woman was getting undressed. She said being handcuffed had made the whole procedure very distressing and difficult. HMIP found this to be disproportionate as it was not based on an assessment of individual risk and compromised the woman’s rights to privacy and dignity. However, HMIP did identify some examples of good practice on restraint in prisons. For example, at Onley, prisoners were formally debriefed following any incident in which force was used against them. At Lowdham Grange, managers carried small portable video recorders to record spontaneous incidents of the use of force (HMIP expects that all planned use of force is video recorded). In England and Wales, HMIP made 58 restraint-related recommendations in its full inspections of 32 adult prisons in 2011–12. In its follow-up inspections during the same period, over a quarter of previous restraintrelated recommendations had not yet been achieved. The majority of recommendations related to the governance of restraint, rather than its application in practice. Prisons were encouraged to improve recording practices and to make better use of data, including analysing trends to assess, for example, whether force was used disproportionately against prisoners from particular backgrounds. There was also a need for 25