HMP Bedford has announced that it will start to ease its coronavirus restrictions in order to aid those more vulnerable prisoners with social visits.
It is said that from June 21st, it will allow access to the gym, for social visits and key work for its most vulnerable prisoners within HMP Bedford.
It started with a tweet
On 14th June, HMP Bedford took to Twitter to announce their plans of easing restrictions after the Covid outbreak 15 months ago. The tweet read “We are pleased to announce that from 21st June 2021 HMP Bedford will be moving to a Stage 3 regime. We will be re-introducing visits, gym and key work for our most vulnerable prisoners.”
In another tweet they wrote “further details’ are promised soon about the opening of the visits booking line.”
This is great news after the outbreak HMP Bedford suffered back in December 2020 where their inmates were stuck to isolate and unable to move from their cells in order to curve the outbreak.
The plan moving forward
HMP Bedford has now said that they are “looking forward to welcoming back families after a very challenging period for both families and prisoners”.
They have confirmed that social guidelines will still be in place during this period as the prison moves into stage 3 of the prison services roadmap for easing COVID-19 restrictions.
Stage 3 is described as ‘Restrict’ in the prison service framework for COVID-19 restrictions easing.
The framework states ‘highest priority areas of regime (e.g. visits)’ can resume with ‘appropriate restrictions’.
The guidelines show that at this stage, it will be reduced to just 12 Prisoners at a time for each visit section so that guidelines can be followed accordingly.
Right now, HMP Bedford is holding a capacity of 372 inmates, the certified normal accommodation (CNA) capacity is 377.
