Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the (a) average age of a prison van and (b) oldest prison van in use by His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service is as of 27 November 2023.
Answered by Gareth Bacon - Shadow Minister (Housing and Planning)
The average age of a prison van is 9 years old.
The oldest prison van is 16 years old.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of the prison population was on remand on average in each year since 2015.
Answered by Gareth Bacon - Shadow Minister (Housing and Planning)
The proportion of the prison population that was on remand in each year since 2015 can be calculated from the figures for the total remand population and those for the total prison population (males and females) that are set out in Table A1.1 of the latest published Offender Management Statistics Quarterly - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1173712/Population_30June2023_Annual.ods.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of (a) single level beds and (b) bunkbeds in use in the prison estate.
Answered by Edward Argar
All beds used across the prison estate are required to comply with quality standards. Any issues are addressed by Property Services in His Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service.
The quality standards take account of specific needs relating to use in the prison estate, including health and safety considerations that are additional to those for commercially available beds.
Where beds are already in situ, prison staff report identified faults for rectification or replacement using the facilities management reporting system.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will publish the number of offenders who were subsequently convicted of murder in each year between 2010 and 2015, broken down by the type of index sentence originally given.
Answered by Edward Argar
I refer the honourable Member to the answer I gave on Monday 27 November to Question 2868: Written questions and answers - Written questions, answers and statements - UK Parliament.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the number of pigeon infestations in the prison estate.
Answered by Edward Argar
HM Prison and Probation Service takes all reasonable steps to manage waste appropriately at prison sites to reduce the likelihood of infestation. Routine planned pest control regimes are in place, facilitated by the Facilities Management providers as part of their core service. In addition to this, reactive pest control visits are undertaken as required.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much was spent on pest control in the prison estate in each year since 2018.
Answered by Edward Argar
The Ministry of Justice has significantly increased investment in custodial Facilities Management over the period, including in pest control activity. The amount spent on pest control in the prison estate for each financial year since 2018 is in the table below:
Financial Year | Total Pest Control Costs (£000) |
2018/19 | 568 |
2019/20 | 872 |
2020/21 | 1,227 |
2021/22 | 1,107 |
2022/23 | 1,172 |
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many assaults by staff on inmates were recorded in each Young Offender Institution in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Edward Argar
Collating the information that is held would require a search of individual records. This could not be done without incurring disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders by the type of index sentence, were convicted of a serious further offence of murder in each year between 2010 and 2015.
Answered by Edward Argar
The table below sets out the total number of convictions, where an offender subject to probation supervision was charged with a serious further offence (SFO), which resulted subsequently in a conviction for murder, for all cases notified to what is now HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2015.
Index Sentence | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 |
Community Supervision | 33 | 45 | 32 | 27 | 23 | 23 |
Determinate Prison Sentence | 16 | 26 | 19 | 23 | 23 | 17 |
Life Licence | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
IPP | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Total | 50 | 73 | 51 | 53 | 48 | 43 |
1. Time period for conviction data relates to the date of SFO notification to HMPPS not the date of conviction.
2. Index sentence refers to the sentencing disposal imposed by the court which led to probation services supervision of the offender.
3. The data only includes convictions for serious further offences of murder that have been notified to the national SFO Team, HMPPS.
4. Conviction data also includes cases where the offender committed suicide or died prior to the trial, where the judicial process concluded that they were responsible.
5. The data for January 2010 to December 2015 has been updated and may differ to any original publication due to data cleansing, re-categorising and re-grouping.
6. Data Sources and Quality. We have drawn these figures from administrative IT systems which, as with some large-scale recording systems, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Serious further offences are incredibly rare, with fewer than 0.5% of offenders supervised by the Probation Service going on to commit serious further offences but each one is investigated fully so we can take action where necessary. We have also injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year into the Probation Service to deliver tougher supervision, reduce caseloads and recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safer.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) prison wardens, (b) probation officers and (c) prison governors were dismissed for (i) sexual harassment, (ii) sexual assault and (iii) rape in the last five years.
Answered by Edward Argar
The number of staff who are subject to Conduct and Discipline are generally low as a proportion of all staff. The number of band 3-5 prison officers and probation officers who were subject to a Conduct and Discipline (C&D) charge of 'sexual harassment/assault' and were recommended for dismissal from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2023 are given in Table 1 below.
There were no Band 10/11 prison governors who were recommended for dismissal for the charge of 'sexual harassment/assault' in the last five years.
'Rape' is not a central charge listed under conduct & discipline. This would be classed under criminal conviction and an investigation would be carried out by the appropriate authorities accordingly.
There is no place for any form of unacceptable behaviour in HMPPS. Such behaviour is contrary to its core values and will not be tolerated. All allegations of unacceptable behaviour are taken seriously, investigated and, where appropriate, disciplinary action will be taken. HMPPS launched its Tackling Unacceptable Behaviours Unit (TUBU) in 2020, and this has been followed by an increase in reported cases. The aim of TUBU is to help improve the working environment by providing additional support, insight and expertise to staff raising concerns. The TUBU provides additional support to managers investigating these concerns and ensures that investigations are carried out fairly and consistently and any unacceptable behaviour is challenged and dealt with appropriately.
Table 1 - Headcount of band 3-5 prison officers1 and probation officers who were subject to a Conduct and Discpline2 charge of 'sexual harassment/assault'4 and were recommended for dismissal, from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2023 (p) by year5 and selected grades6
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|
|
|
|
| Headcount |
Grade | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | Total |
Band 3-5 prison officers | 4 | 3 | 10 | 10 | 21 | 48 |
Probation officers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ~ | ~ |
Notes to table
1. Band 3-5 Officers includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officers (incl specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officers, and Band 5 / Custodial Managers.
2. Conduct and Discipline cases are defined as where a penalty has been imposed on a member of HMPPS staff for a reason of conduct.
3. A dismissal case is defined as where at least one of the charges relating to an individual is recommended for dismissal. Information on the outcomes of any appeal is not included. Also not included are any staff who resign prior to the Conduct and Discipline case.
4. The Conduct and Discipline data does not disaggregate further than this so cannot split out harassment and assault.
5. Year relates to 12 months to 31 March.
6. If an individual had multiple charges they will be counted once in each year.
~ Denotes suppressed values of 2 or fewer or other values which would allow values of 2 or fewer to be derived by subtraction. Low numbers are suppressed to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 2018.
(p) Provisional data. There may be minor changes to figures from December 2017 onwards in future due to additional data being recorded on the systems subsequent to extraction.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many violent attacks by inmates on inmates were recorded in Young Offender Institutions in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Edward Argar
Data on assaults by children and young people in the secure estate, by sector, are published quarterly on GOV.UK. The latest publication with data from April 2014 is available at tables 1.2.1 and 1.2.2: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/safety-in-the-children-and-young-people-secure-estate-update-to-june-2023.
Data prior to April 2014 are available at table 8.14: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/youth-justice-statistics.
The way assaults are counted changed in April 2018 for Young Offender Institutions. Information before and after this date should not be compared.
Safeguarding data for internal management information purposes has been collected centrally since November 2019. The categories to be reported include sexual abuse.