Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to review the capability of (a) HM Prison Service and (b) contracted-out prisons to respond to incidents of concerted indiscipline.

Concerted indiscipline is defined as an incident in which two or more prisoners act together in defiance of a lawful instruction or against the requirements of the regime of the establishment. Such incidents can cover wide range of circumstances, with most quickly resolved locally but others requiring varying levels of more significant intervention. We are continually reviewing prisons across the public and private estates, and supporting them to mitigate the risk of serious incidents and provide effective responses to incidents that do occur.

This process draws on a wide range of local data and intelligence reported daily by Governors, and assessed alongside other data, such as independent assessments from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons. I review this data regularly with the Chief Executive and other senior leaders.

Interventions available to prevent risks escalating include deploying extra staff on detached duty and overtime, installing extra CCTV, or making fast improvements to building facilities where damage presents risks. Measures are also taken when appropriate to segregate prisoners, provide extra detection or blocking equipment and provide additional search teams. Under the mutual aid process, there are agreements between both public and private prisons which enable them to support each other to respond to significant incidents effectively. If the incident is significant enough, we bolster the local response by deploying specialist (Tornado) teams. Following this, we help stabilise prisons after incidents by transferring disruptive prisoners.

In response to incidents in late 2016 we are improving this existing capability by resourcing two additional, national dog teams to support more perimeter patrols, helping prevent throw overs and drone operations. We are also increasing the number of Tornado-trained staff by 10%. In addition, as part of our wider investment in staffing levels we are increasing intelligence and dedicated search capability at prison level.

In the longer-term, we are improving prisons’ capacity to mitigate and respond to risks of incidents by increasing prison officer numbers by 2,500 and introducing of a new offender management model. Under this model, residential officers in public sector prisons will have a caseload of 6 prisoners each to support and challenge. We expect private prisons to offer a model which also provides one-to-one support for each prisoner.