Prison Officers: Mandatory Body Armour

Clive Jones Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I thank the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) for securing this very important debate.

Our prison system has been pushed into a deep crisis by years of neglect and mismanagement under previous Governments. Prisons are overcrowded, understaffed and unable to properly rehabilitate offenders. Attacks on prison officers, including on three officers at HMP Frankland last April, shine a light on the consequences of a prison system left overstretched and under-resourced by previous Governments.

I know at first hand the impact that the stressful environment can have: my dad was a prison officer for nearly 20 years, following his 22 years of service in the Army, which included serving in the second world war. My dad worked as a prison officer at Maidstone, and then at the infamous Dartmoor prison in Devon where there were notorious criminals including Frank Mitchell, who was involved with the Kray twins. My dad then moved to Albany prison on the Isle of Wight, which became a maximum security prison. He was looking after many IRA criminals, which made the job particularly stressful as they regularly rioted and caused problems. He then moved to Reading prison, which is how I came to live in the Wokingham area.

During his career, my dad was under immense stress and pressure, often working very long hours with others to look after notorious, violent criminals on a daily basis. From my dad’s experience, I know that stress and safety fears were constant concerns that wore him and many others down.

Violence is unacceptably high in prisons. There is an average of 28 assaults on staff every day in the prison system. In the 12 months to March 2025, the rate of assaults was 7% higher than in the 12 months to March 2024—a new peak of 10,568 assaults on staff. The crisis of severe overcrowding in the prison system is clearly taking its toll on staff. In 2024, England’s prisons lost almost 150,000 working days due to mental health related sickness—a 44% increase since 2019.

What support do prison officers get? According to the Ministry of Justice, all prison officers have access to mental health support, including a 24-hour helpline, but the Prison Officers Association has said that it has consistently called on the service to fund specialist on-site mental health support. It is clear that prison officers do not feel properly supported at the time when they need it most: when they are actually at work.

The crisis in the prison system is also linked to serious staffing issues. The Justice Committee found that the prison operational workforce has struggled with recruitment, retention and sickness in recent years. As of 30 June 2025, there were 22,702 band 3 to band 5 prison officers in post, with a leaving rate of 11.6%. Despite the recruitment of new officers, the number of prison officers decreased by 4% on the previous year. Those are signs of a workforce seriously struggling to cope in a crumbling prison system.

On top of that strain, in September 2025 it was reported that hundreds of prison officers recruited from abroad may lose their jobs and be forced to return to their homelands due to changes to the Labour Government’s immigration policy. That shift came after the Prison Service began sponsoring skilled worker visas for overseas applicants to address staff shortages. To put that in numbers, according to the Prison Governors Association, more than 1,000 prison officers—nearly 5% of the workforce—have a limited right to work in the UK and are reliant on a skilled worker visa to continue. If that solution to the staffing crisis is in danger, the Government need to do more to protect prison officers and provide the support they need so that they do not leave the service.

Ministers have said that they will make new protective vests mandatory in close supervision centres and separation centres, which hold the most dangerous offenders. They then said that more evidence was needed before rolling out the vests to prison officers. It is a welcome step forward that the Lord Chancellor recently announced a big increase in protective body armour for frontline officers, but more needs to be done to ensure that all prison officers have the protection they need to do their job safely and effectively. Having the relevant protective vest will help to improve prison officers’ mental health.

No one should feel unsafe when fulfilling their professional duties, working in a prison, and of course, any changes must always be made in consultation with the officers themselves. Finally, I thank all prison officers, past and present, who have worked tirelessly to protect their colleagues and the public, and who have supported the rehabilitation of prisoners and offenders into our society.