Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps his Department has taken to reduce the rate of prisoners re-offending after their release.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Employment is a significant factor in reducing reoffending. Secure and sustained employment for people released from prison starts with getting the right education in prison and we are creating a Prisoner Education Service focussed on work-based training and skills.
The Sentencing White Paper also sets out proposals for changes to rehabilitation periods – shortening the time in which prison leavers have to declare criminal records to prospective employers. For the first time, some custodial sentences of over 4 years will become spent as part of criminal records checks for non-sensitive roles in addition to significant reductions to the rehabilitation periods for sentences under 4 years.
These proposals, along with recently approved legislation to change the rules governing disclosure for sensitive roles by removing the multiple convictions rule and the disclosure of youth cautions, reprimands and warnings, will help those who have offended in the past access employment.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what comparative assessment he has made of the number of adults convicted of offences involving the online grooming of children in 2018 and 2019.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Ministry of Justice publishes statistics on proceedings and outcomes for a range of offences relating to grooming including: sexual communication with a child; and meeting a child aged under 16 following sexual grooming. Offences relating to online grooming are not distinguished from all grooming offences in court data.
Data on these offences is published up to December 2019 and available in the Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code data tool:
Filter ‘detailed offence’ for:
Engage in sexual communication with a child |
Meeting a female child aged under 16 following sexual grooming etc. - offender aged 18 or over |
Meeting a male child aged under 16 following sexual grooming etc. - offender aged 18 or over |
Or filter ‘offence’ for:
88A Sexual Grooming
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to halt drug supplies into prisons.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
We are taking decisive action to improve security to: stop illicit items being smuggled in by prisoners, staff and visitors; to strengthen staff resilience to corruption; and to target organised criminals who exploit prisons as a lucrative illicit market. This package of measures is being funded through the £100m investment to tackle crime behind bars, announced by the Prime Minister last summer.
Enhanced gate security is being deployed to the most challenging prisons in the estate. Cutting-edge x-ray body scanners will target prisoners internally smuggling illicit items into prisons. We recently announced the first 16 sites to receive this equipment.
Whilst the vast majority of our staff are honest and hardworking, we are also investing new resource to step up our counter corruption capability and strengthen (in scale and reach) intelligence-led operations and investigations with law enforcement partners against those that present the greatest threat of harm to prison security and the community.
We will also equip sites with new technology and staff to enhance staff and visitor searching at the gate. We have already announced the first 7 sites for this provision.
We are fully supporting the Right Hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham’s Private Member’s Bill on Prisons (Substance Testing) which is due to have its second reading on the 15 May. This Bill will improve our ability to test for drugs across the estate and provide the appropriate support to prisoners using drugs.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of drug finds in prisons between 2008 and 2018.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The number of drug finds in prisons across England and Wales between 2008 and 2018 can be found in the HMPPS Annual Digest 2018/19:
2008 | 4,654 |
2009 | 4,392 |
2010 | 3,537 |
2011 | 3,353 |
2012 | 4,143 |
2013 | 4,292 |
2014 | 5,617 |
2015 | 8,757 |
2016 | 10,611 |
2017 | 12,077 |
2018 | 17,283 |
Drug finds in prisons continue to rise, and in the 12 months to March 2019, there were 18,435 incidents; an increase of 41% over the previous 12-month period.
The increase in drug finds since 2015 is partly due to the increase in finds of psychoactive substances. HM Prison and Probation Service has also put in place a number of security counter-measures over this period, allowing it to seize more items of contraband than ever before. These included:
We are now investing a further £100m in prison security to stop contraband such as drugs from entering prisons. This includes more X-ray baggage scanners to enhance searching of visitors and staff and more X-ray body scanners to detect prisoners concealing contraband inside their bodies.
This is part of our £2.75 billion investment to make prisons safer for offenders and staff, while working closely with healthcare providers to ensure prisoners have the support they need to live drug-free. We therefore also published in April 2019 The National Prison Drug Strategy which has three strands: restricting supply, reducing demand and ensuring prisoners are encouraged to engage in meaningful activity and treatment interventions.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people who were released from prison following a decision by the Independent Parole Board were subsequently convicted and imprisoned for a further offence in the last three years.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This Government is committed to reducing reoffending by ensuring that all offenders have the tools they need to turn their backs on crime. Prisons and probation must provide the opportunity for prisoners to rehabilitate, which will ultimately reduce reoffending and protect the public.
The Ministry of Justice does not hold data on the number of offenders released following a Parole Board decision who were subsequently convicted and imprisoned for a further offence. However, a breakdown of the total number of reoffences following release after serving an indeterminate sentence is published. A breakdown of these is included below:
Table 1: Total number of reoffences following release from custody after serving an indeterminate sentence
Indeterminate sentence | Reoffending cohort | ||
April 2015 – March 2016 | April 2016 – March 2017 | April 2017 – March 2018 | |
Indeterminate sentence for public protection | 141 | 191 | 231 |
Mandatory life prisoner | 10 | 17 | 27 |
Other life1 | 27 | 37 | 21 |
‘Other life’ category includes discretionary and automatic life sentences
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when the Law Commission plans to publish a response to its consultation on wills, which closed on 10 November 2017.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Law Commission remains committed to completing its work on wills, the timetable for which remains under review. The next step will be publication of its final report rather than a response to the consultation undertaken in 2017.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been convicted for illegally administering teeth whitening processes in the past three years.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The number of people convicted for offences under s41 of the Dentistry Act 1984 (“Unregistered person carrying on the business of dentistry”) over the last 3 years was 2; 1 in each of 2016 and 2017. It is not possible to identify whether these offences were specific to teeth whitening in centrally held data on court proceedings.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress his Department has made in the past year in combating the use of drones to supply illegal drugs to prisoners.
Answered by Robert Buckland
We are taking decisive steps to tackle the use of drones as a supply route for organised criminals to bring contraband, including drugs, into prisons.
Prisons use netting and window grilles to stop drones from delivering contraband successfully. To deter criminals, HM Prison and Probation Service is also working closely with the police to arrest suspected drone operators and secure convictions. Thanks to such joint working, and following the largest investigation of its kind, an organised criminal gang of 15 were collectively sentenced in October 2018 to nearly 40 years in prison for using drones to deliver drugs into Merseyside prisons. The ringleader received a sentence of 10 years, the highest single sentence for drone-related activity to date.
Where contraband gets into prisons using a drone, our counter-measures assist us to retrieve them and frustrate further criminal activity. In respect of drugs, our Drugs Taskforce is working with law enforcement to restrict supply. It has also developed a national Prison Drug Strategy which was published in April to reduce demand for drugs and build recovery, as well as restrict supply. We have also invested £70 million to improve safety, security and decency in prisons, allowing us to fund new X-ray body scanners, improved searching techniques, phone-blocking technology and a financial crime unit to target organised crime group members operating in prisons.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of imprisonment for public protection sentences.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The assessment of the sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) found that they had been used far more widely than intended, and the IPP sentence was subsequently abolished in 2012 and replaced with a new regime of determinate sentences alongside life sentences for the most serious offenders.
Attention is now focused on reducing the risk and thereby the successful rehabilitation of those prisoners who continue to serve the IPP sentence. A joint action plan is in place, co-owned by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and the Parole Board, with the specific aim of providing opportunities for prisoners to progress towards safe release. The plan reviewed regularly to ensure that the actions in it meet the changing needs of the IPP population.
This approach is working, with high numbers of unreleased IPP prisoners achieving a release decision year on year: 562 in 2015, 576 in 2016, 616 I 2017 and 506 in 2018. However, it is important to remember that prisoners serving IPP sentences have committed serious sexual or violent offences - and many remain in prison because the independent parole board has assessed their risk of serious harm to the public to be too great to warrant their release.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of prosecutions for breaches of the Data Protection Act 2018 which have resulted in fines in the last 12 months.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Ministry of Justice has published information regarding the number of prosecutions for offences under the Data Protection Act 2018 in England and Wales which can be found at the following link –
In the ‘Detailed Offence’ field, filter by -
‘Obtain / procure disclose / retain personal data without consent of controller’
The total number of prosecutions that resulted in fines for breaches of the Data Protection Act 2018 will appear in the pivot table.
Note that the above offence was the only breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 for which there were any prosecutions in 2018. The Data Protection Act 2018 consists of 7 other offences for which there were no prosecutions in 2018.
Offences related to the Data Protection Act were introduced in May 2018. The number of prosecutions and those convicted of these offences are therefore relatively low as it takes time for the police to record, investigate and charge offences, before proceedings reach the courts.