Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what sentences were handed down to each employee of the Prison Service found guilty of criminal activity in the workplace in 2013.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) does not hold records of employees charged with all types of criminal activity.

Whilst the vast majority of its staff are honest and hard working, NOMS is committed to detecting, deterring and disrupting all corrupt behaviour by individuals working in prisons. A dedicated NOMS Corruption Prevention Unit was set up to ensure staff corruption is identified and tackled. As part of this work NOMS has compiled a central record of staff convicted of criminal offences which meet the NOMS definition of corruption.

The NOMS definition is: Corruption occurs when a person in a position of authority or trust abuses their position for their or another person’s benefit or gain. This would include the misuse of their role in order to plan or commit a criminal act, or a deliberate failure to act to prevent criminal behaviour.

The central record does not therefore include all types of criminality as not all offences meet the definition.

There were 23 convictions for corruption-related offences during 2013. A breakdown of the different sentences is provided below.

The total number of convictions by year for corruption-related offences is shown in the table below. The number of convictions has remained broadly constant over the last five years.