Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many sniffer dogs work across the prison estate; and what the annual cost to the public purse of the use of those dogs is.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will list the prisons that are employing the use of dogs for drug detection purposes.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
HMPPS adopts a regional approach to deployment of dog teams, which allows Prison Group Directors to determine the best approach to deploy their resource. Therefore, drug detection dogs are available for deployment to all prisons.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will publish the terms and conditions for the contract for the recording of video evidence (section 28) in sexual assault cases.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Section 28 service is provided under a wider contract with Vodafone and it is not a standalone contract. We are therefore unable to publish it on its own.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, (a) in how many cases have parole board decisions been successfully challenged and (b) what the total financial cost was of paying compensation in those cases, in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Public protection is our top priority and it is absolutely right that parties are able to exercise their right to ask the Parole Board to reconsider a decision if there is evidence the process has been followed incorrectly or that the decision is irrational.
The Parole Board introduced its reconsideration mechanism in 2019 whereby the Secretary of State or the prisoner can apply for a parole decision to be looked at again by the Parole Board if they have reasons to show the decision is procedurally unfair, irrational or contained an error of law.
Since the commencement of the reconsideration mechanism, 153 cases have been challenged and received a new hearing for a panel to reconsider a prisoner’s application for parole out of 774 applications. The data requested on the number of reconsiderations that were successfully challenged and led to a different outcome is not available.
The financial cost data you have requested regarding compensation payments where prisoners have challenged a decision is not available in the format requested.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have (a) applied to be volunteer magistrates (b) been accepted as magistrates and (c) become magistrates in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Data on the number of appointments to the magistracy each year up to 31 March has been published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) since 2020. MoJ publishes this data as part of the annual Judicial Diversity Statistics (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/judicial-diversity-statistics). MoJ did not collect magistrates’ appointment data in a reliable way before 2015.
Year | Number of new appointments to the magistracy |
2015/2016 | 642 |
2016/2017 | 687 |
2017/2018 | 692 |
2018/2019 | 1082 |
2019/2020 | 1011 |
2020/2021 | 662 |
2021/2022 | 1,204 |
Prior to January 2022, MoJ did not collect data on the number of applications to the magistracy. On 17 January 2022, MoJ launched an online system which collects information on magistrate applications and has made the recruitment process more efficient. As of 31 October 2022, 4,321 people have applied. Data on applications since the introduction of the new process, up to 31 March 2023, will be included in the 2023 Judicial Diversity Statistics, to be published on 13 July 2023.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what is the average time taken to appoint a volunteer magistrate from the point of application to the applicant sitting in Court.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
In January 2022, the Ministry of Justice launched an updated magistrate recruitment and selection process alongside a marketing strategy to increase the number and diversity of applicants to the magistracy. As part of this work, a number of changes were made to improve the efficiency and timeliness of the full process. These include the introduction of a new online qualifying assessment in February 2023, which will result in quicker recruitment of magistrates. As applications under the new system are still being processed, we are not yet able to calculate the average time from application to appointment.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many babies have been born on the prison estate in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
We began collecting information on the number of babies born to women in the prison estate in 2020-21. Information is not available for previous years.
During the nine months to 31 March 2021, and the twelve months to 31 March 2022, fewer than five babies were born within the prison estate in England and Wales in each period. We have not provided the exact figure, as that could lead to the identification of individuals.
Any information relating to the number of women who have experienced miscarriages would be held by the National Health Service, and not by the Ministry of Justice.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women have experienced miscarriages whilst in prison in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
We began collecting information on the number of babies born to women in the prison estate in 2020-21. Information is not available for previous years.
During the nine months to 31 March 2021, and the twelve months to 31 March 2022, fewer than five babies were born within the prison estate in England and Wales in each period. We have not provided the exact figure, as that could lead to the identification of individuals.
Any information relating to the number of women who have experienced miscarriages would be held by the National Health Service, and not by the Ministry of Justice.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prisoners were transferred to open conditions in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The table below sets out the requested data for 2021 and 2022 in relation to Inter Prison Transfers (IPTs) to open conditions under the Generation 4 Prisoner Escort & Custody Services (PECS) contract, which came into effect in August 2020.
The previous contract was structured in a different way, and there is no means of obtaining comparable data for earlier years.
Open conditions are an important means of furthering the rehabilitation of offenders, especially those who have spent many years in closed conditions.
Those held in open jails must abide by stringent conditions and we do not hesitate to move them back to tougher, closed jails if they breach the rules.
Calendar Year | Total Prisoners Transferred to Open prisons (IPTs) | % of moves to Open prisons vs Overall IPTs |
2021 | 50191 | 8.73% |
2022 | 56598 | 8.16% |
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of prisoners who die within two weeks of release do so because of drug-related causes.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Every drug-related death is a tragedy. Between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022, 65 offenders supervised by the Probation Service in England and Wales under post-release supervision, died within two weeks of release from prison. Of these, 27 died as a result of a self-inflicted drug overdose (including intentional and unintentional drug overdoses), equivalent to 41.5%. This figure excludes deaths where drugs were a contributing factor, but not the cause of death.
The apparent cause of death is as reported in the probation case management system, and has not been independently verified. The total number of deaths includes those with an unclassified cause of death, referring to those where the cause was unknown at the time of reporting.
As part of our up to £120m investment to tackle drug misuse, we are focusing on improving continuity of care from prison by providing prisoners with the opportunity to engage with community treatment pre-release via video calling, and recruiting Health and Justice Coordinators in every probation region to improve links between prison and local treatment services. Naloxone, a life-saving medication for those who have suffered an opiate overdose, is available in Probation Contact Centres (including Approved Premises) with staff trained to use it in an emergency.