Prisoners: transfers to other prisons in England and Wales

The National Offender Management Service does (broadly speaking) seek to help prisoners to maintain family ties. There may, though, be many reasons ─ including (amongst other things) the prisoner’s security categorisation, availability of prison places, remoteness of the prisoner’s home or the prison and the need to move prisoners around the prison estate to ease population pressures ─ why prisoners may be held in a prison which is not the closest to their home. There is no requirement that prisoners should be held within a fixed distance of their home and nothing to prevent a prisoner being transferred to another prison; indeed, the Secretary of State has discretion to hold prisoners “in any prison”. Where family members are finding it difficult to visit a relative in prison, the prisoner may apply for accumulated visits, a temporary transfer to a prison closer to home to receive visits there or a transfer to another prison. Information about any of these should be available in the prison.