Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle potential racial disparities in the use of force in prisons.

We have improved the recording of incidents, utilising a digital platform, that will collect more information on who we are using force on, including race. The department is incorporating data on Use of Force into its prisons equalities monitoring tool to be released to front-line D&I leads. This tool is for internal operational monitoring and policy development. This will allow D&I leads to directly compare whether there is parity across ethnic groups in Use of Force incidence within prisons.

We have made improvements to local use of force governance, increasing the frequency of meetings and ensuring that the right people are members of the committee. Prisons are expected to have a diverse and empowered committee, with laypersons invited to express the views of prisoners. In some prisons, prisoners are invited to form part of the committee. We have provided clear guidance around Use of Force governance though the Good Governance Toolkit. The toolkit supports sites with their assurance, staff development and prisoner rehabilitation. It provides signposting for concerns relating to force and establishes a framework of positive practice and improvement through assurance. The toolkit highlights the input required for the assurance processes, such as the data collation, analysis and presentation at the UoF Committee and to ensure an explain or reform response is made. This was developed in consultation with the HMPPS Race Action Programme and both internal and external stakeholders and is based around the Procedural Justice principles.

We launched training package, aimed at local Use of Force co-ordinators to help improve their data literacy, so that they understand the importance of good quality data, how to collate that, and then how to present it in a way that leads to meaningful discussions. This was launched in conjunction with the updated Toolkit to support the governance process.

We have been conducting research on Use of Force, attending committee meetings and gathering best practice, including in the data considered at the committee, ways of running the meeting, and its membership. The research included speaking to prisoners and staff who have experienced force. This will be available to use in Autumn 2023.

We have established a Use of Force Disproportionality working group, which brings together Diversity and Inclusion, the HMPPS Race Action Programme and Use of Force team, that will collect and share good practice around reducing disproportionality, and develop further guidance on how to take action where necessary.

We have put in place a process around the assurance visits that the central team conduct, with standardised measures, including looking at data and disproportionality. They also look at the diversity of the local committee. Once a visit is completed, the report is shared with the prison and depending on the level of concern, follow up visits arranged. When we devised the internal scoring and weighting, we placed a high weighting on identifying disproportionality, and also on the actions taken. If prisons are not doing either of those, it would be reported back, and support given to develop the prisons own processes. If their committee is not meeting the recommendation then the team will suggest ways to do so, such as prisoner representation or external third sector organisations. We also engage at regional level with group safety leads, and equality leads to support them and also take referrals to ensure support is given.

We have set up an Expert Advisory Panel with a diverse and expert membership to discuss the issues we are having, and to ensure external input.