Decision report 201005201

Summary
Mr C, who is a prisoner, complained about delay in being assessed for offending behaviour related programmes for which he had been identified as suitable. Mr C felt his progression to less secure conditions would be affected by the delay. He said he was identified for programmes at his Integrated Case Management (ICM) case conference in October 2010 and nothing had happened since. (ICM is a process designed to give prisoners help and support to deal with their social or personal difficulties so they are less likely to reoffend when released from prison.) The prison told us that Mr C was serving a consecutive sentence and only received his second sentence in March 2010 at which point he became a long term prisoner. The prison also told us that Mr C was assessed using the new programmes assessment process in April 2011 and began his identified programme in May 2011. Because Mr C only waited six months to be assessed, we did not agree that there had been an unreasonable delay and we did not uphold his complaint.