Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders were marked with a (a) corrupter alert and (b) potential corrupter alert on 1 May in each year since 2015.

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.

HMPPS defines a known corruptor as an individual (usually a prisoner or supervised individual) who has received an adjudication or criminal justice outcome related to corrupting staff members.

HMPPS defines a potential corruptor as an individual (usually a prisoner or supervised individual) who has not received an adjudication or criminal justice outcome related to corrupting staff, however there is indication, intelligence or otherwise, that they have attempted to corrupt staff. The individual will usually also have identified risk factors that increases their likelihood and capability of attempting to corrupt our staff.

The HMPPS system which holds alerts does not have a report built in that would allow us to establish the exact number of prisoners with alerts for a specific time frame or date, and it is not information that the Counter Corruption Unit (CCU) has tracked in the time period given. It is therefore not possible to provide details outside of the current data, nor a yearly breakdown.

To provide the requested data, it would be a disproportionate cost to check individual records to provide an answer to this question.

The overwhelming majority of our prison staff are hardworking and honest but thanks to our action – including bolstering our CCU – we are rooting out more of the small minority who are not.

This is on top of robust vetting procedures including criminal record checks, while our £100 million investment into tough security measures such as X ray body scanners is helping cut the supply of drugs entering jails.