Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars: Why HMP Bronzefield Is Failing Vulnerable Women

A new IMB (Independent Monitoring Board) report on HMP/YOI Bronzefield, published on 10 December 2025, reveals a devastating reality: women in acute mental distress are still being sent to prison because secure psychiatric beds simply don’t exist. Despite warnings in the 2023 IMB thematic report, Bronzefield’s 2024-25 annual review shows that almost nothing has changed, except the situation is worsening.

Bronzefield, the UK’s only purpose-built private women’s prison, run by French-owned Sodexo Justice Services, has effectively become a default psychiatric unit, without the staffing, facilities or legal mandate to treat severely unwell women.

Prison Used as a ‘Place of Safety’, But It Isn’t Safe

In just one year, 22 women were sent to Bronzefield as a “place of safety” under the Mental Health Act, up from 19 the previous year. The prison’s 18-bed inpatient healthcare unit is permanently full, often holding women in extreme psychological crises, many displaying complex and self-harming behaviour.

Women who should be in hospital are instead locked in cells.

The IMB found that only 45% of hospital transfers met the 28-day statutory target, with some women waiting more than 100 days for a secure psychiatric bed. The longest wait was 157 days.

These delays lead to catastrophic consequences: overstretched staff, traumatised prisoners, increased self-harm, and spikes in violence linked directly to untreated mental illness. Other women inside say they feel unsafe living alongside those in crisis, conditions that retraumatise instead of rehabilitating.

Healthcare System in Collapse

Healthcare is run by CNWL NHS Foundation Trust, a failing trust which is funded to provide full-time psychiatric support within its contract with the Ministry of Justice’s Health Justice Commissioning board. There is no permanent GP. Only a floating roster depending on whoever is available in a particular week. The Main GP Dr. Omar Weheliye and the GP with the oversight for the trust Dr Stella Chigozie, are both in the subject of serious complaints with the GMC. Dr Weheliye, is alleged to have removed a woman’s antipsychotic medication completely without letting her withdraw from it safely and Dr Stella Chigozie makes decisions about women’s chemotherapy and radiotherapy when she’s not an oncologist and she hasn’t even seen it in the clinic

The report highlights chronic:

• shortages of trained mental-health staff
  
  
• poor coordination and in-fighting among NHS trusts
  
  
• delayed medication
  
  
• inconsistent GP cover
  
  
• dysfunctional complaints systems
  
  

The IMB calls Bronzefield’s healthcare “under-resourced” and “unable to cope.” Even senior clinicians describe the system as beyond capacity.

A Private Prison Profiting While Women Suffer

Bronzefield is operated by Sodexo, a private catering corporation, not a healthcare provider, not a community safety organisation. Yet this company is being paid to detain women whose real need is psychiatric intervention, safety, and medical care.

It’s Time to Act

These findings are not just operational failures, they are moral failures. No woman in the UK should be imprisoned for being mentally unwell.

If you believe Bronzefield should no longer be used as a dumping ground for vulnerable women, or that this privately run “megaprison” should be shut down altogether, join the Bronzefield Action Group today.
Stand with families, survivors, and campaigners demanding an end to this harmful, unjust system.

➡️ Email to join: info@bronzefielactiongroup.org
➡️ Take action. Share. Organise. Demand change.