Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners were (a) charged and (b) convicted of bribing prison staff in the last five years.

The vast majority of prison staff are hardworking and dedicated. A minority of staff engage in corrupt activity which is often as a result of conditioning and manipulation by prisoners.

HM Prison & Probation Service has a zero-tolerance policy on corruption, and take appropriate action to the small number of staff and prisoners who break the rules. Our £100 million Security Investment Programme, aimed at reducing crime in prisons, including reducing the number of staff being manipulated and conditioned by prisoners, is ongoing. This includes increased resource to pursue corruption, as well as established a new ‘Prevent’ function, aimed at building staff resilience against corruption.

The Counter Corruption Unit data setup is based on corrupt staff and whilst prisoner details are recorded, we are not able to access this without checking individual records. It would be at a disproportionate cost to check individual records to provide an answer to this question.