Prisoners: Self-harm and Suicide

(asked on 11th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many people in adult prisons in England and Wales were involved in (1) self-harm incidents, and (2) self-inflicted deaths, in 2019; and how many of those had a mental health problem.


Answered by
 Portrait
Lord Keen of Elie
This question was answered on 24th February 2020

The Government publishes quarterly statistics on self-harm in prison - the latest version provides figures up to September 2019. We also publish annual death in custody statistics, all of which are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/safety-in-custody-statistics.

There were 84 self-inflicted deaths in custody between Jan to Dec 2019, of which all 84 were in adult prisons.

There were 10,651 individuals self-harming in custody between Jan to Sept 2019, of which 10,421 were in adult prisons.

The Ministry of Justice cannot provide the information on how many of these individuals had a mental health problem as we do not hold clinical data.

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