Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many hours of corruption prevention training are provided to non-uniformed prison staff.

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.

Our Counter Corruption Unit led Awareness sessions, delivered by our Prevent team, run between two and two and a half hours, dependent on staff involvement on the day. We do not record this as hours delivered, but sessions, and we have delivered 2544 sessions since April 2021.

Data collection/recording methods changed in January 2023 to reflect the number of attendees to these sessions. Since then, over 9702 staff have been trained in total. They changed again in June 2023 to record those that were of an operational grade. From June 2023 onwards, 2602 non-operational staff received training.

This Corruption Prevention training is in addition to the induction security training package delivered to non-operational staff by local establishments for new starters, which will be establishment specific in terms of length.