Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps HM Prison and Probation Service take to ensure prisoners released on end of custody supervised licence can continue to access drug addiction treatment programs when they are released from prison.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We know that supporting offenders to engage in drug and alcohol treatment is vital to reduce reoffending and we are working with health partners on a range of interventions to strengthen continuity of care for prison leavers. We have recruited over 50 Health and Justice Co-ordinators nationwide to improve links between prison and community treatment services, procured 650 laptops to enable prisoners to speak to community treatment providers before release and we are rolling out the Probation Notification Actioning Project (PNAP) which will make probation aware of prison leavers who have been referred to community treatment so probation can support continued engagement.
The lower-level offenders released on ECSL will have a release plan put together by probation, and where appropriate this release plan will include access to drug and alcohol treatment. It remains at the discretion of the prison service to block or delay the ECSL release of any prisoners where doing so would result in losing access to essential services such as drug and alcohol treatment.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of new probation officers left the service within a year of joining in each year since 2014.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
A considerable majority of Probation Officers first join the Probation Service as Trainee Probation Officers. During their time as a trainee, they will spend around 15-21 months training before potentially taking up a post as a Band 4 Probation Officer. As a result of this trainee pipeline, there will only be new Probation Officers with less than one year in the Probation Service if they joined the service as a qualified Probation Officer and then left within 12 months.
Retention of Probation staff is a priority for the service. A national standardised approach to exit interviews has been implemented to better understand the key drivers of attrition and feedback from these interviews helps shape and determine retention interventions at a local and national level.
The Probation Service is in its second year of a multi-year pay deal for staff. Salary values of all pay bands will increase each year, targeted at key operational grades to improve a challenging recruitment and retention position. The pay increases differ for each job role, but to provide an example Probation Officers will see their starting salary rise from £30,208 in 2021/22 to £35,130 by 2024/25.
The table below shows only those Probation Officers who joined the service as qualified Probation Officers and so will not include any Probation Officers who joined as trainees (who will all have been in the service for longer than a year by the time they qualify as a Probation Officer). The Probation Service unified in June 2021, bringing together the National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Companies. As a result, figures pre- and post-June 2021 are not comparable because of the change in the workforce makeup.
Table 1 - Number of Band 4 Probation Officer joiners to HMPPS and those who left HMPPS within 1 year: 2022-2023
Year | All joiners | Staff who left within 1 year |
2022 | 42 | 3 |
2023 | 44 | 5 |
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which prisons have used prison officers on detached duty in 2023; and how many (a) officers were deployed to each prison and (b) times those officers were deployed.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
During 2023, 21 prisons received Band 3 officers on National Detached Duty. The table attached shows the average number of detached duty staff deployed at each site in each month.
It is not possible, without incurring disproportionate cost, to provide the remaining information requested, as this would require a detailed examination of individual records.
We are doing more than ever to attract and retain the best staff, including boosting salaries and launching our first-ever nationwide advertising campaign. These efforts are working - we have over 4,800 FTE additional officers between March 2017 and December 2023, and retention rates for prison staff are improving.
We have committed to recruiting up to 5,000 additional prison officers across public and private prisons by the mid-2020s.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prisoners were sharing a one-person cell with another person on (a) 1 March 2021, (b) 1 March 2022 and (c) 1 March 2023.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Crowding levels are published annually in the HMPPS Prison Digest. Figures for the last three years for the number of prisoners sharing a one-person cell with another person for that year can be found in the documents here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmpps-annual-digest-april-2020-to-march-2021.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmpps-annual-digest-april-2021-to-march-2022.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmpps-annual-digest-april-2022-to-march-2023.
The accompanying annex to the latest publication, titled ‘Chapter 2 Tables – Prison Crowding’ provides the percentage of prisoners sharing a one-person cell with another person for each year since 1996.
The determination of the maximum crowded capacity of a particular establishment is a matter of operational judgement, considering risks to safety and stability.
By the end of this SR period, we will have invested nearly £4 billion towards the delivery of 20,000 modern and uncrowded prison places, the biggest prison build programme since the Victorian era, ensuring the right conditions are in place to rehabilitate prisoners, helping to cut crime, and protect the public. We have delivered c.5,900 of these and by the end of 2025, we will have delivered over 10,000 in total.
These places are being delivered through the construction of six new prisons, as well as the expansion and refurbishment of the existing estate and temporary accommodation. We are also continuing to invest in prison maintenance so that existing places remain in use and are safe.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an estimate of the number of proposed new prison places that will be rapid deployment cells.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We are delivering 20,000 prison places, the largest prison build programme since the Victorian era. As part of this, and alongside further opportunities to optimise capacity in the estate, the estimated number of proposed new prison places that will be Rapid Deployment Cells is c.1,800. Delivery of the first c.1000 began last year, with c.630 already delivered across 12 sites.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the positive rate for random mandatory drug tests carried out at HMP Wandsworth was in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The latest period for which random mandatory drug tests (rMDT) data is available is the year April 2022 to March 2023 (2022-2023). 18% of random mandatory drug tests (rMDT) in Wandsworth were positive for either traditional or psychoactive drugs throughout 2022-23.
We are doing more to tackle the supply of drugs in prisons. Our £100m Security Investment Programme completed in March 2022 and delivered 75 additional X-ray body scanners, supplying full coverage across the closed male estate. We have also installed 84 X-ray baggage scanners at 49 sites, drug detection machines and metal detection archways. Furthermore, we are taking steps to support individuals with substance misuse issues in prison. We have dramatically increased the number of incentivised substance-free living units, where prisoners commit to living drug-free with incentives and regular testing. Over 70 prisons now have an ISFL, up from 25 in summer 2022.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many vacancies in the probation service there were in each region on 1 January 2024.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The workforce position, at 31 December 2023, was 20,806 full-time equivalent (FTE) Staff in Post working in Probation Service grades (including those working in Approved Premises). This is an increase of 1,856 FTE (9.8%) since 31 December 2022.
Recruitment and retention remain a priority across the Probation Service and we have injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year since 2021 to deliver more robust supervision, recruit more staff and reduce caseloads to keep the public safer.
We have recruited a record 4,039 trainee Probation Officers between 2020/21 and 2022/23 and we expect these intakes to qualify by the end of 2024 and begin to take on Probation Officer caseloads.
Trainee Probation Officers are onboarded twice annually (including this March which will not be counted in the figures below), and this can lead to fluctuations in staffing levels across the year.
We will continue to run centralised recruitment campaigns in priority regions to help bolster the number of applications.
Table One: Vacancies across Probation Service Regions, December 2023, all Probation Service grades.
Probation Service Region | Vacancies (FTE) |
PS East Midlands | 21 |
PS East of England | 277 |
PS Greater Manchester | 15 |
PS Kent, Surrey & Sussex | 121 |
PS London | 463 |
PS North East | 50 |
PS North West | 128 |
PS South Central | 154 |
PS South West | 85 |
PS Wales | 0 |
PS West Midlands | 82 |
PS Yorkshire & the Humber | 45 |
PS Approved Premises | 0 |
Notes
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many barricade or prevention of access incidents took place in prisons in England and Wales in each year since 2018.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
A barricade or prevention of access is an incident where one or more prisoners deny access to all or part of a prison, by use of any physical barrier, to those lawfully empowered to have such access.
An incident at height is any incident that takes place above or below ground level where a person could be injured if they fell from that place. Incidents at height come in many forms, ranging from internal incidents (prisoners on the fall arrest netting or climbing over bars) to an external incident (prisoners on the roof).
The information requested can be found in the HMPPS Annual Digest - Protesting Behaviour data tool: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64c1438a90b545000d3e83c4/7.__Protesting_behaviour_data_tool.xlsx.
These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS Incident Reporting System. Care is taken when processing and analysing returns but the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. Although shown to the last case, the figures may not be accurate to that level.
The national staffing position in prisons is improving, with a substantial increase of over 1,634 Full-Time Equivalent Band 3-5 prison officers in the 12 months ending 31 December 2023.
We are committed to making prisons a safe place to work and providing prison officers with the right support, training and tools to empower them to do their jobs. We are providing targeted support to prisons to operate the Challenge, Support and Intervention Plan (CSIP) which provides a framework for managing violence that is centred around the individual needs of prisoners, helping them to move away from violent behaviours.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many incidents at height occurred in a prison in England and Wales in each year since 2018.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
A barricade or prevention of access is an incident where one or more prisoners deny access to all or part of a prison, by use of any physical barrier, to those lawfully empowered to have such access.
An incident at height is any incident that takes place above or below ground level where a person could be injured if they fell from that place. Incidents at height come in many forms, ranging from internal incidents (prisoners on the fall arrest netting or climbing over bars) to an external incident (prisoners on the roof).
The information requested can be found in the HMPPS Annual Digest - Protesting Behaviour data tool: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64c1438a90b545000d3e83c4/7.__Protesting_behaviour_data_tool.xlsx.
These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS Incident Reporting System. Care is taken when processing and analysing returns but the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. Although shown to the last case, the figures may not be accurate to that level.
The national staffing position in prisons is improving, with a substantial increase of over 1,634 Full-Time Equivalent Band 3-5 prison officers in the 12 months ending 31 December 2023.
We are committed to making prisons a safe place to work and providing prison officers with the right support, training and tools to empower them to do their jobs. We are providing targeted support to prisons to operate the Challenge, Support and Intervention Plan (CSIP) which provides a framework for managing violence that is centred around the individual needs of prisoners, helping them to move away from violent behaviours.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many individuals will be released under the end of custody supervised license scheme in 2024.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
While ECSL is in operation, it will continue to free up spaces as more prisoners reach the point in their sentence when they become eligible for release, but only where that continues to be necessary to remain within maximum capacity levels.
An analysis of its use will be based on one year’s worth of data and published on an annual basis in line with other statistics.