The site was first used by the
Prison Commission in 1960 as a detention centre, and many buildings were added in the grounds of Erlestoke House. In 1998, it was reported that thieves had broken into Erlestoke Prison and stolen £3000 worth of gardening tools from a shed. Two years later, two inmates from Erlestoke used a makeshift ladder in a daylight
jailbreak. The two escapees then stole a car from a nearby farm, but then crashed it, and were subsequently recaptured by the police. In December 2001, an inspection of Erlestoke by
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons found cells in the oldest part of the prison had damp walls and poor furniture. Cleanliness was also criticised, as was the ability of some staff "to adapt to new ideas on rehabilitation" at the prison. However, a year later, a report declared Erlestoke Prison one of the best in the country, with a Government official describing the inspection report as "astoundingly good". In March 2005, a report from the
Independent Monitoring Board found that violent incidents at the prison had dramatically increased, to 1,400 annual incidents from its previous 800. In 2005, an employment tribunal awarded nearly £400,000 damages to a white prison officer of
South African descent for "enduring years of racial abuse" in connection with black prisoners targeting him for his clearly identifiable accent. According to the officer, he had received little assistance from the prison's management. In 2009 the prison was rated as one of the worst in the UK, but it improved after Andrew P.P. Rogers became governor. He worked to change the reputation of the prison from what the papers had called a "third world prison" to one of the top three prisons in the country. In 2011, Rogers put together a musical performance of West Side Story, performed by an acting academy and prisoners. In August 2017, prison staff successfully ended a disturbance involving a few prisoners. ==Current usage ==