Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for what reason Government guidance entitled Coronavirus Restricted Temporary Release measures states that children serving sentences for drug offences, including simple possession of a class A drug under s5(1) and (2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act, are specifically excluded from consideration for release.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Protecting the health and well-being of our staff and the children in our care is paramount. Currently, the youth secure estate has sufficient headroom to enable every child to have their own room and physical distancing is being observed in line with Public Heath England guidance.
We will temporarily release a small number of children who are judged to be low risk and near the end of their sentence. Children who have committed drug-related offences are excluded from eligibility to ensure public confidence in the administration of justice. The threshold for custody is higher for children and young people so drug offences are likely to be more serious ones.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the statement by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice on 18 March 2020, Official Report, column 335WH, whether the performance of different tasks in prisons during the covid-19 outbreak will be (a) fully risk-assessed before staff are asked to perform them and (b) voluntary.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
In line with the latest Government advice, as of 24 March all non-essential activities in prisons involving groups of people should be stopped. This includes social visits, education, non-essential work, association, communal dining, periods of mass prisoner movement, religious services and access to the gymnasium.
In order to boost staff availability part of contingency planning may include the need to ask staff directly employed by HMPPS to work in a different place and potentially do different tasks, this includes redeploying operationally trained staff currently working in headquarters back into prisons. We are working closely with Trade Union colleagues to ensure that there is a suitable framework that provides clear guidance in respect of what would be an appropriate range of tasks, this will be fully risk assessed before staff are asked to perform the tasks. The decisions on this will be made by Governors at establishments based on local needs.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Justice of 18 March 2020, Official Report, column 335, that some contingency planning may include the need to ask staff to work in a different place and potentially do different tasks, whether prison governors are authorised to ask staff not directly employed by Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service to perform tasks outside of their normal work area of responsibility.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
In line with the latest Government advice, as of 24 March all non-essential activities in prisons involving groups of people should be stopped. This includes social visits, education, non-essential work, association, communal dining, periods of mass prisoner movement, religious services and access to the gymnasium.
In order to boost staff availability part of contingency planning may include the need to ask staff directly employed by HMPPS to work in a different place and potentially do different tasks, this includes redeploying operationally trained staff currently working in headquarters back into prisons. We are working closely with Trade Union colleagues to ensure that there is a suitable framework that provides clear guidance in respect of what would be an appropriate range of tasks, this will be fully risk assessed before staff are asked to perform the tasks. The decisions on this will be made by Governors at establishments based on local needs.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Justice of 18 March 2020, Official Report, column 335, that some contingency planning may include the need to ask staff to work in a different place and potentially do different tasks, whether prison education staff will be expected to perform non-education tasks in prisons during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
In line with the latest Government advice, as of 24 March all non-essential activities in prisons involving groups of people should be stopped. This includes social visits, education, non-essential work, association, communal dining, periods of mass prisoner movement, religious services and access to the gymnasium.
In order to boost staff availability part of contingency planning may include the need to ask staff directly employed by HMPPS to work in a different place and potentially do different tasks, this includes redeploying operationally trained staff currently working in headquarters back into prisons. We are working closely with Trade Union colleagues to ensure that there is a suitable framework that provides clear guidance in respect of what would be an appropriate range of tasks, this will be fully risk assessed before staff are asked to perform the tasks. The decisions on this will be made by Governors at establishments based on local needs.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, of 18 March 2020, Official Report, column 335WH, what plans he has to cancel education provision in prisons during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
In line with the latest Government advice, as of 24 March all non-essential activities in prisons involving groups of people should be stopped. This includes social visits, education, non-essential work, association, communal dining, periods of mass prisoner movement, religious services and access to the gymnasium.
In order to boost staff availability part of contingency planning may include the need to ask staff directly employed by HMPPS to work in a different place and potentially do different tasks, this includes redeploying operationally trained staff currently working in headquarters back into prisons. We are working closely with Trade Union colleagues to ensure that there is a suitable framework that provides clear guidance in respect of what would be an appropriate range of tasks, this will be fully risk assessed before staff are asked to perform the tasks. The decisions on this will be made by Governors at establishments based on local needs.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much money has been (a) recovered and (b) received through fines as a result of (i) court orders and (ii) other recovery and penalty mechanisms in relation to illicit tobacco in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
The HMCTS Trust Statement records information relating to financial penalties imposed in the Magistrates Courts including data on the value of impositions and collections made in a financial year.
The reports used to prepare the Trust Statement do not include the offence type and hence it is not possible to identify cases relating to illicit tobacco from the available data without interrogating each individual case in the system to determine the required offence.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the review of Islamist extremism in prisons, probation and youth justice, what separation units were recommended by that review; which types of separation unit were established; how many of those units are in operational use; and in which prisons those units were established.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Following the publication of Ian Acheson’s 2016 report, the Government committed to establish Separation Centres which are designed to hold the most subversive extremist prisoners, and to safeguard the vulnerable from their malicious ideology.
Across the prison estate there is one unit in operational use and a further two units operationally prepared for use, with the capacity to hold 28 individuals in total. These are contained within HMP Frankland, HMP Woodhill and HMP Full Sutton, which are High Security Prisons.
We take the threat posed by terrorist offenders very seriously. In the three and a half years since the report, we have implemented a much wider range of measures to strengthen our work in this sector. This includes the creation a single joint Home Office HMPPS extremism unit to oversee the delivery of all counter terrorism work in prison and probation.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to set a maximum age limit for prison officer staff involved in the security of category A terrorist prisoners.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
There are no plans to set a maximum age for prison officers working with prisoners convicted of terrorist offences in Category A prisons.
HMPPS takes the safety of its staff seriously and takes a risk-based approach when deciding which officers are best placed to work with specific types of offender.
This is more appropriate than any blanket age limit, especially as this could exclude some of our most experienced or specialist officers and be discriminatory on age grounds.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many compulsory deradicalization programmes there are for identified prisoners; and how many prisoners have attended those programme in each month since June 2017.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Radicalisation is a complex issue. For every terrorist offender in prison and on probation, we have a range of capabilities to ensure robust supervision. We use tailored interventions with offenders - psychological, ideological and theological - to support their disengagement and rehabilitation. None of the programmes offered are compulsory, to ensure the intervention is most effective, the individual must be willing to engage.
We will continue to regularly review Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) intervention programmes to ensure they are informed by the most up to date research on correctional rehabilitation. Accurately measuring the effectiveness of a programme relies on sufficient numbers completing it, which can take a number of years.
Interventions are led by specialist intervention providers. None of the programmes developed for terrorist offenders are prison officer led. However, we have trained over 29,000 prison staff to recognise, report and challenge extremist behaviour in prison.
HMPPS works closely with partners, including with law enforcement, to understand and manage the risks that terrorist offenders present in prison, using a range of control and rehabilitation measures. This is underpinned by a specialist counter terrorism case management process, which is led by HMPPS Counter Terrorism specialists.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of de-radicalisation programmes in prisons for Islamic extremists.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Radicalisation is a complex issue. For every terrorist offender in prison and on probation, we have a range of capabilities to ensure robust supervision. We use tailored interventions with offenders - psychological, ideological and theological - to support their disengagement and rehabilitation. None of the programmes offered are compulsory, to ensure the intervention is most effective, the individual must be willing to engage.
We will continue to regularly review Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) intervention programmes to ensure they are informed by the most up to date research on correctional rehabilitation. Accurately measuring the effectiveness of a programme relies on sufficient numbers completing it, which can take a number of years.
Interventions are led by specialist intervention providers. None of the programmes developed for terrorist offenders are prison officer led. However, we have trained over 29,000 prison staff to recognise, report and challenge extremist behaviour in prison.
HMPPS works closely with partners, including with law enforcement, to understand and manage the risks that terrorist offenders present in prison, using a range of control and rehabilitation measures. This is underpinned by a specialist counter terrorism case management process, which is led by HMPPS Counter Terrorism specialists.