Prisons: Drugs

(asked on 13th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of drug overdoses at prisons in each of the last three years.


Answered by
Damian Hinds Portrait
Damian Hinds
Minister of State (Education)
This question was answered on 19th December 2022

Year

Number of self-harm incidents due to drug overdoses

2019

2,295

2020

2,158

2021

2,273

We are committed to doing all we can to prevent deaths from drug overdoses in prison. We’ve outlined in both our Prisons Strategy Whitepaper and the Government’s 10-year drug strategy ‘From Harm to Hope’ (2021) how we will achieve this. We have committed to opening Drug Recovery Wings in prisons, introduced Problem Solving Courts and we supply life-saving naloxone medication to staff in prisons and in Approved Premises to help prevent unnecessary opioid deaths.

Naloxone is a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids. It is currently carried by healthcare staff in prisons to administer where opiate overdose is suspected.

We propose to implement Naloxone in all prisons and probation sites in England and Wales and to train all new entrants and 30% of existing staff to administer Naloxone and to recognise the signs of overdose. Existing staff will be asked to volunteer to administer Naloxone.

Consistent with National Statistics on these prison incidents, as published in Safety in Custody, figures do not include incidents in Secure Training Centres.

In prisons, as in the community, it is not possible to count self-harm incidents with absolute accuracy.

In prison custody, however, such incidents are more likely to be detected and counted. Care needs to be taken when comparing figures shown here with other sources where data may be less complete.

Incidents where self-harm was due to a drug overdose can include multiple individuals; the figures in the table count the number of incidents where an overdose occurred rather than the number of individuals that overdosed.

Includes self-harm options listed as "illegal drugs", "own medication" and "other persons medication"

Data Sources and Quality

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 data only includes self-harm incidents collated centrally; identifying any wider incidents that lead to a hospitalisation and have a connection to drugs would exceed the cost threshold as it would require reading through the text of each incident.

For a breakdown of Self Inflicted Deaths by method (including overdose), please see section 1.8 in the below published data from Safety in Custody: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1113633/Deaths_in_prison_custody_1978_to_2021.xlsx

Table 1.1 in the above publication gives the number of other/non-natural deaths per year.

In the case of drug related deaths where no intent to self-harm has been discovered, the death has been classified as “Other: Non-natural”, however this category also includes other accidental deaths where drugs were not present.

‘Other: Non-Natural’ deaths include accidental and other difficult to classify deaths including those for which further information is awaited. Some of the most recent two years figures are expected to be reclassified as natural causes or self-inflicted deaths.

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