HM Prison North Sea Camp is a men's

open prison An open prison (open jail) is any jail in which the prisoners are trusted to complete sentences with minimal supervision and perimeter security and are often not locked up in their prison cells. Prisoners may be permitted to take up employment w ...

( Category D), located on the edge of the parish of

Freiston __NOTOC__ Freiston is a village and civil parish in Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish (including Freiston Shore) at the 2011 census was 1,306. It is situated approximately east from Boston. The Greenwich Prime Zero m ...

(near

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

) in

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. North Sea Camp is operated by

His Majesty's Prison Service His Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) is a part of HM Prison and Probation Service (formerly the National Offender Management Service), which is the part of His Majesty's Government charged with managing most of the prisons within England and Wale ...

History

North Sea Camp opened as a

Borstal A Borstal was a type of youth detention centre in the United Kingdom, several member states of the Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland. In India, such a detention centre is known as a Borstal school. Borstals were run by HM Prison Service ...

in 1935, having been established by a group of Borstal Trainees who had been marched cross-country from

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 70,145 in t ...

. They set up a

campsite A campsite, also known as a campground or camping pitch, is a place used for overnight stay in an outdoor area. In British English, a ''campsite'' is an area, usually divided into a number of pitches, where people can camp overnight using te ...

, and immediately began work building a

sea wall A seawall (or sea wall) is a form of coastal defense constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation ...

to protect the site from the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

. Once this was complete, they began reclaiming land by building a further

- that land then became the prison farm. Until the sale of adjacent land in 2004, the prison had the biggest prison farm in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, much of which was on land reclaimed from

The Wash The Wash is a rectangular bay and multiple estuary at the north-west corner of East Anglia on the East coast of England, where Norfolk, England, Norfolk meets Lincolnshire and both border the North Sea. One of Britain's broadest estuaries, it i ...

. In August 2006, the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

reported that 49 prisoners had absconded from North Sea Camp in the previous twelve months, and that a total of 339 had absconded since 1996. In April 2007,

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

TV's '' Dispatches'' documentary series broadcast film secretly recorded at North Sea Camp by a prisoner, Dafydd Evans. Evans's filming showed prisoners taking drugs and smuggling alcohol. He also demonstrated apparent weaknesses in the prison's security procedures and described the escape of a man with convictions for robbery and arson which he blamed on security failures and collusion by fellow prisoners.

Lord Ramsbotham General David John Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, (6 November 1934 – 13 December 2022) was a British Army officer, who later served as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. He was awarded a life peerage in 2005, and later sat on the crossbenches of t ...

, a former Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, was quoted in the programme as saying: "It is not secure; it’s under-staffed, it’s under-resourced and you’ve got a lot of people who quite frankly should not be in those conditions. The system of sending people to these places has broken down." Responding to the programme, the Home Office said open prisons played an important role in rehabilitating offenders and all those transferred to such conditions were risk-assessed. In November 2009, an inspection report from

Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons is the head of HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the senior inspector of prisons, young offender institutions and immigration service detention and removal centres in England and Wales. The current chief insp ...

stated that North Sea Camp Prison had improved. Inspectors praised the prison's safety record, and the amount of purposeful activity for inmates. However, the report called for the refurbishment of prison buildings and facilities, and further improvements to the prison regime for short-term inmates. Two days before the release of the report, two inmates convicted of

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...

absconded from North Sea Camp. The two were recaptured less than a week later. Paul Robson, who was jailed for life in 2000 for violent sexual assaults, and had been refused parole five times, absconded from the prison in February 2022. He was recaptured four days later.

Notable prisoners

Jeffrey Archer Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English novelist, life peer, convicted criminal, and former politician. Before becoming an author, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–1974), but did not ...

in 2001-2002. * Gary Hart (guilty of causing the

Selby rail crash The Selby rail crash (also known as the Great Heck Rail Crash) was a high-speed train crash that occurred at Great Heck near Selby, North Yorkshire, England, on the morning of 28February 2001. An InterCity 225 passenger train operated by Great ...

) in 2003.

References

External links

Ministry of Justice pages on North Sea Camp
{{DEFAULTSORT:North Sea Camp (Hm Prison) Prisons in Lincolnshire Category D prisons in England 1935 establishments in England