Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers have had disciplinary action taken against them relating to either the supply or use of drugs in each of the last ten years.

HM Prison & Probation Service is proactive in detecting, investigating and taking disciplinary action against the small number of prison staff who break the rules, and involve the police where appropriate.

We are also spending £100m on tightening up prison security, including through X-Ray body scanners and drug dogs to stop contraband getting into our prisons

Prison officers who are found to be unfit for duty through drug abuse or taking prohibited drugs while at work or on duty are subject to procedures set out in the HMPPS Conduct and Discipline policy. Such misconduct may lead to disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.

In the last ten years, 33 prison officers have faced a disciplinary action charge linked to drink and drug related offences and I have included a further year-by-year breakdown of these charges below. Currently, HMPPS records drink and drugs charges within the same category on their HR system. It is therefore not possible to provide data for drug offences alone.

Table 1: Band 3-5 Prison Officer staff charged with selected offences related to drink and drugs, 2011/12 to 2020/21

Source: NOMS Case Management Application and HMPPS electronic Performance Management (ePM)

Notes:

1). Band 3-5 Officers includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officers (incl specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officers, and Band 5 / Custodial Managers.

2). Conduct and discipline cases are defined as where a penalty has been imposed on a member of HMPPS staff for a reason of conduct.

3). Staff with at least one conduct and discipline case concluded during the year.

4). A case is defined as a unique combination of case and individual member of staff. Where more than one member of staff is involved in a single case these are counted separately in this table. Equally staff involved in more than one case during the year are counted multiple times.

5). The disciplinary charges include the following:

- Unfit for duty through drink/drugs

- Trafficking and sub charge of drugs

-Criminal conviction and sub charge of possession /supply of drugs

It is impossible to separate out drinks and drugs, therefore, the table above may over represent officers subject to disciplinary action due to drugs.

~ Denotes suppressed values of 2 or fewer or other values which would allow values of 2 or fewer to be derived by subtraction. Low numbers are suppressed to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 2018.

(p) Provisional data