Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the cause of the increase in the number of days added to the sentences of prisoners for misconduct between 2011 and 2016.

Discipline procedures are central to the maintenance of a safe, decent and rehabilitative custodial environment. They require adjudications to be conducted lawfully, fairly and justly. Only Independent Adjudicators, who are District Judges or Deputy District Judges can, in cases deemed to be sufficiently serious, make an award of additional days. Additional days cannot extend the totality of the sentence imposed by the court but, they will have the effect of extending a person’s custodial time left to serve. The most serious offences are referred to the police.

Information on the number of individual prisoners who were subject to punishments for disciplinary misconduct is not routinely extracted from the adjudications database as the primary purpose is to report on the volume of punishments imposed. In order to collect this specific information on prisoners, a matching exercise using prison population and adjudication databases would be required to identify each individual prisoner who was sanctioned under the Prison Rules, as a result of which the data could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. Information on the number of occasions additional days were awarded to prisoners between 2011 and 2016 is publicly available and is published as part of the Offender Management Statistics bulletin.

Table 1 below provides an extract from the published statistics, outlining the number of occasions additional days were awarded by offence during 2011-2016.

The majority of punishments of added days are for unauthorised transactions, which concern illicit economies within prisons, such as possession and selling of forbidden items. We are working closely with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to improve the response to crime in prisons and to ensure that wherever possible and appropriate those who commit serious crimes in prison are punished through the courts rather than by the internal disciplinary system. We are also reviewing and sharing best practice from prisons who have built up excellent relationships with their local police forces.

We are also reviewing the Adjudications policy set out in Prison Service Instruction 47/2011 as part of our ongoing Prison Reform Programme. The review incorporates a study to examine the impact of disciplinary adjudication punishments on custodial misconduct and provide a better understanding of ‘what works’ in terms of behaviour change.