North Sea Camp opened as a Borstal in 1935, having been established by a group of Borstal Trainees who had been marched cross-country from Stafford. They set up a campsite, and immediately began work building a sea wall to protect the site from the North Sea. Once this was complete, they began reclaiming land by building a further sea wall - 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, much of which was on land reclaimed from The Wash. In August 2006, the BBC 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 TV's Dispatchesdocumentary 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, 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 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 absconded from North Sea Camp. The two were recaptured less than a week later.
The prison today
North Sea Camp is an open Category D prison for adult males. Accommodation at the prison comprises four units, two with multi-occupancy rooms and two with single rooms. The prison also has a small terrace of self-contained houses for life sentence prisoners who are coming close to parole. Activities for inmates include prison education, workshops and laundry. A number of prisoners work outside the prison on day release.
