Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to HM Prison and Probation Service annual staff equalities report: 2020 to 2021, published on 25 November 2021, what comparative assessment he has made of the reasons for the rate of awards of special bonuses in 2020-21 being higher for (a) men compared to women, (b) white staff compared to staff from Black, Asian and other Ethnic Minority Communities, (c) disabled staff compared to non-disabled staff and (d) staff with non-Christian religious affiliations compared to staff with Christian or no religious affiliation.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Special Bonuses are payable to HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) staff, under Reward and Recognition policies, to recognise and reward in-year performance and staff who go above and beyond their normal duties. The Reward and Recognition policies apply, and are available equally, to all HMPPS staff. Nominations for in-year awards are subject to approval by panel. On the basis that reward and recognition payments are paid on merit it is to be expected that payments, year to year, may vary across different demographics within the workplace.
It should also be noted that a number of Special Bonuses under other arrangements – particularly as part of Covid-19 overtime schemes – were paid during 2020-2021 and these could possibly skew figures depending on the level of take up across the prison and probation estates and the demographics of staff within those prisons or approved premises.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Prison population projections: 2021 to 2026, published on 25 November 2021, what estimate he has made of the number of prisoners serving an Indefinite Sentence for Public Protection who will be (a) released and (b) recalled in each year in the forecast period.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Projection year | Total estimated prisoners released after IPP sentence | Total estimated prisoners recalled after IPP sentence |
Jul-21 to Jun-22 | 200 | 800 |
Jul-22 to Jun-23 | 200 | 700 |
Jul-23 to Jun-24 | 200 | 700 |
Jul-24 to Jun-25 | 100 | 700 |
Jul-25 to Mar-26 | 100 | 500 |
All figures rounded to the nearest 100.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP & YOI Chelmsford by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, published on 24 November 2021, if he will set a timescale for improvement at HMP & YOI Chelmsford to reach a rating of Reasonably Good against the healthy prison tests of (a) safety, (b) respect, (c) purposeful activity and (d) rehabilitation and release planning.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons provides invaluable independent scrutiny and found that insufficient progress had been made in improving HMP & YOI Chelmsford since 2018. Following an unacceptable inspection in August, urgent measures to accelerate improvements were announced, including more staff training, increased use of the body scanner to detect illicit items, a reduction in the prison’s population and improvements to cells.
Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) will publish a full Action Plan by 16th December 2021, addressing the key concerns and recommendations raised by the Inspectorate in its recent report. HMPPS would also welcome an Independent Review of Progress in line with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ standard 8–12-month timescales. Whilst this would not result in revised ratings against the healthy prison tests, this would provide an independent judgement of progress against the key recommendations.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP & YOI Chelmsford by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, published on 24 November 2021, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the steps taken in response to past HM Inspectorate of Prisons reports into HMP & YOI Chelmsford since 2018.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons provides invaluable independent scrutiny and found that insufficient progress had been made in improving HMP & YOI Chelmsford since 2018. Following an unacceptable inspection in August, urgent measures to accelerate improvements were announced, including more staff training, increased use of the body scanner to detect illicit items, a reduction in the prison’s population and improvements to cells.
Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) will publish a full Action Plan by 16th December 2021, addressing the key concerns and recommendations raised by the Inspectorate in its recent report. HMPPS would also welcome an Independent Review of Progress in line with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ standard 8–12-month timescales. Whilst this would not result in revised ratings against the healthy prison tests, this would provide an independent judgement of progress against the key recommendations.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Women need women who support them, published by Advance on 22 November 2021, what recent estimate he has made of the (a) re-arrest and (b) proven reoffending rates for women given a (i) conditional caution followed by support from a women’s centre and (ii) short prison sentence.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
It is not possible to identify offenders who have been given a conditional caution followed by support from a women’s centre based on the data we collect. As a result, we cannot provide the associated proven reoffending rates.
The Home Office and Ministry of Justice do not collect data on re-arrests. The Home Office collects and publishes data on the number of notifiable arrests made by police forces in England and Wales. These data are published as part of the ‘Police Powers and Procedures’ statistical collection, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales’
The 12-month proven reoffending rates for women released from a short custodial sentence between October to December 2019 are provided in the table below. This is broken down by custodial sentence length.
Custodial sentence length | Proportion of adult women offenders who reoffended1, 2 |
Less than 12 months | 61.1% |
Less than or equal to 6 months | 64.1% |
More than 6 months to less than 12 months | 44.6% |
Taken from tables C1a and C2a accessible here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1028660/proven-reoffending-oct19-dec19-3-monthly_-_Final.ods
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Women need women who support them report published by Advance on 22 November 2021, what steps he is taking to increase the use of (a) conditional cautions followed by support from a women’s centre and (b) community resolutions followed by support from a women’s centre relative to court-based disposals for women suspected of low-level offending.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Government is legislating in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to reform the out of court disposal framework, which includes conditional cautions, to ensure that, in future, all out of court disposals have conditions aimed at rehabilitation, reparation or punishment. They will provide an opportunity for intervention and support to offenders at an earlier stage, diverting them into rehabilitative services to help reduce escalation of offending and address complex needs. Community services for women, including those provided by women’s centres, can also be an important resource for the police as an alternative to prosecution.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Women need women who support them, published by Advance on 22 November 2021, what recent assessment he has made of the (a) costs and (b) potential merits of holistic community support provided by women’s centres.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Female Offender Strategy recognises the importance of early intervention and initiatives that divert women away from the criminal justice system and into support services that address their vulnerabilities and the underlying causes of offending. It also acknowledges that women’s services such as women’s centres play a key role in providing holistic support to vulnerable and complex needs women in or at risk of contact with the criminal justice system.
The Ministry of Justice’s Data Lab report “Women’s Centres throughout England” (May 2015) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/427388/womens-centres-report.pdf found that women’s centres can help to reduce reoffending by between 1 and 9 percentage points. Since publication of the Strategy, the Ministry of Justice has invested £9.5 million in women’s community sector organisations, including women’s centres.
The cost of support can be difficult to calculate because the type and scope of provision provided by women centres varies widely.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Women need women who support them, published by Advance on 22 November 2021, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the findings of that report.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Female Offender Strategy recognises the importance of early intervention and initiatives that divert women away from the criminal justice system and into support services that address their vulnerabilities and the underlying causes of offending. It also acknowledges that women’s services such as women’s centres play a key role in providing holistic support to vulnerable and complex needs women in or at risk of contact with the criminal justice system.
The Ministry of Justice’s Data Lab report “Women’s Centres throughout England” (May 2015) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/427388/womens-centres-report.pdf found that women’s centres can help to reduce reoffending by between 1 and 9 percentage points. Since publication of the Strategy, the Ministry of Justice has invested £9.5 million in women’s community sector organisations, including women’s centres.
The cost of support can be difficult to calculate because the type and scope of provision provided by women centres varies widely.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Annual Report of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Wayland, published on 23 November 2021, what steps he is taking to (a) eliminate the shortfall of 28 FTE Band 3 prison office staff at HMP Wayland and (b) increase staffing levels to a level that is compatible with rehabilitation and security.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
A number of initiatives have been put in place to support an increase in staffing at HMP Wayland including a bespoke recruitment campaign for the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk (BCN) region, supported by a dedicated local recruitment taskforce to increase focus on candidate engagement, attendance at local outreach events , and provide information to help and encourage people to apply.
The campaign aims to attract sufficient applications to support all the prisons within the cluster and offers an incentive to candidates who apply to establishments which have previously had less applications.
In addition to the external recruitment activity, an internal level transfer campaign has been delivered and applications are being progressed. This is a great opportunity for HMP Wayland to welcome experienced officers to the establishment, and to allow for the cross-fertilisation of knowledge, skills and experience.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Annual Report of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Wayland, published on 23 November 2021, whether he plans to undertake research on the effect on rehabilitation and reoffending of the virtual cessation of programmed courses, vocational and employment training and education for more than a year to date.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
COVID-19 has had a significant impact on both prisons and society. As such, research into the impact of the cessation of courses, training and education has not been feasible, due to the various factors that will have impacted reducing reoffending and rehabilitation during the pandemic.
At the start of the pandemic, we took decisive action in custody to keep staff, prisoners, and the wider community safe. This included adjusting prison regimes to reduce contacts and limit the spread of COVID-19. Since then, we have eased restrictions to allow more activity wherever safe to do so, based on public health advice about the level of risk in each establishment.
Evaluations of previous rehabilitative programmes have been published during the pandemic via Justice Data Lab (see https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/justice-data-lab-statistics-january-2021) and we are exploring the impact that using different delivery models has had on education and other programmes, including the delivery of unpaid work.
Statistics on reoffending and prisoner employment on-release will continue to be published quarterly and further data on education is planned for next year (following our Prison Education Statistics publication in August 2021 - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-education-statistics-2019-2020)