Altcourse and Vasile Moisa: when prison records cannot be trusted

Vasile Moisa, a 51-year-old Romanian remand prisoner, died after suffering a heart attack at HMP Altcourse and sustaining a hypoxic brain injury.¹

The central issue is not only whether staff used handcuffs during a medical emergency. It is whether a prison can be trusted to preserve an honest account of what happened when that account may expose poor judgment.

The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman found that Altcourse submitted an “apparently altered” risk-assessment form after Moisa’s death, with previously blank sections highlighted and no explanation for the discrepancy.¹

That is the point at which an individual death becomes a question of institutional accountability. A flawed decision can be investigated; a record that may have been changed to obscure the decision threatens the investigation itself.

Senior staff said Moisa was never handcuffed, but paperwork referred to cuffs and an escort chain, while a pharmacy technician recalled staff preparing to use restraints as he suffered the medical emergency.¹

The contradiction is not a technicality. It is precisely why independent scrutiny exists, and precisely why recommendations are weak if the underlying evidence is contested, incomplete or quietly rewritten.

The investigation also found that staff failed to provide translation services or assess Moisa’s communication needs despite known conditions including diabetes, asthma and a previous stroke, impairing his clinical care.¹

Altcourse accepted the ombudsman’s findings and completed the recommended actions, but formal compliance is not the same as institutional learning. The public record still needs to explain who altered the document, why, and what safeguard prevents the same conduct at the next death.

The wider British pattern is familiar: the Post Office Horizon failure has been described as the result of choices made over several years rather than one isolated decision, while public inquiries themselves face criticism for delay and adversarial process.²³

Those inquiries matter because they connect individual harm to systems. But their value depends on what follows: clear responsibility, preserved evidence and changes that survive the departure of the officials who made the original decisions. At Altcourse, the first obligation is simple—make the record reliable before asking the public to accept the institution’s account.