Offenders: Suicide

(asked on 25th October 2018) - View Source
Questioner
Lord Patel of Bradford Portrait
Lord Patel of Bradford
(Non-affiliated - Life peer)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of suicide rates among offenders on licence and in prisons; what assessment they have made of whether the number of offenders in the prison system contributes to those suicide rates; and whether they have plans to reduce the number of offenders in the prison system.

Answered by
Portrait
Lord Keen of Elie
This question was answered on 8th November 2018

The Government publishes data on the number of deaths among offenders being supervised in the community, and on the number and rates of deaths in prisons. The most recent statistics were released on 25 October 2018. In the year to March 2018, among offenders under post-release supervision there were 1.4 self-inflicted deaths per 1,000 offenders, down from 1.7 per 1,000 in the previous year. This rate is calculated against a snapshot of the number of offenders under supervision on 31 March, not against the total number who had been supervised during the year. The rate of self-inflicted deaths in prison in the year to September 2018 was 1.0 per 1,000 prisoners: up from 0.9 per 1,000 in the previous 12 months, but below the rate in each of the three years before that. The Government takes very seriously its responsibility to keep staff and prisoners safe, and we are committed to reducing the incidence of self-harm and suicide across the estate. This is why we have established a prison safety programme through which we are taking forward a comprehensive set of actions to improve safety in custody. They include:

  • investing in over 3,000 additional staff in order to deliver consistent, purposeful regimes;
  • introducing the new key worker role, under which staff can give prisoners more effective support;
  • rolling out revised and improved training for staff in assessing and managing the risk of suicide and self-harm amongst prisoners (this has already reached more than 17,000 staff);
  • improving support for prisoners in their early days in custody;
  • revising the ACCT case management process for those identified as being at risk; and
  • renewing our partnership with the Samaritans by confirming a further three years' grant funding for their valuable Listeners Scheme.
We want to see prison numbers come down, but not by setting an arbitrary figure for reduction. Custody should achieve justice, by holding offenders whose crime is so serious that no other penalty will do, or who would pose a danger to the public if released. It must also rehabilitate those prisoners, because society is entitled to expect them to make a fresh start when they get out. We are determined to do better by offenders who are sent to prison, to make them less likely to return. There is persuasive evidence that short custodial sentences do not achieve that, and that community sentences can be more effective at reducing re-offending. We will therefore look at what more we can do to emphasise that short custodial sentences should be viewed as a last resort.

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