Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many incidents there were of (a) self-harm, (b) attempted self-inflicted death and (c) self-inflicted death by prisoners on remand in each year since 2010; and what proportion of all prisoners on remand such incidents represented in each of those years.

Every death in custody is a tragedy, and we are committed to reducing the number of self-inflicted deaths and self-harm incidents in prisons. Since 2010 the number of self-harm incidents and self-inflicted deaths by prisoners on remand has fallen significantly. All prisons are required to have procedures in place to identify, manage and support people who are at risk of harm to themselves, and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has put in place additional resources to undertake this safer custody work. NOMS has also reviewed case management process for prisoners assessed as being at risk and will be acting on the recommendations in due course.

The national statistics on safety in custody use the following categories: self-harm incidents are defined as “any act where a prisoner deliberately harms themselves irrespective of the method, intent or severity of any injury”; and self-inflicted deaths are defined as “any death of a person who has apparently taken his or her own life, irrespective of intent.” They do not include a separate category of “attempted self-inflicted death”, because the intent of the prisoner is often unknown. Some incidents are more likely to result in a fatality than others, but the point at which a self-harm incident becomes an attempted self-inflicted death is unclear. For this reason, the tables below include the answers to parts (a) and (c) of the question only. It is not possible to provide the proportion of prisoners that self-harm incidents relate to, as more than one incident may be attributed to the same individual. Instead, a rate per 1,000 prisoners has been provided.