Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to address alcohol harm in prisons.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice works closely with NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) to ensure that all prisoners who need it have access to high-quality alcohol and substance misuse treatment. As part of the government’s 10-year drug strategy, DHSC has made a record £532 million of additional investment through to 2024/25 to improve drug and alcohol treatment and recovery services
The MoJ is also investing to tackle drug and alcohol misuse and engage more offenders in treatment, including recruiting Drug Strategy Leads in key prisons to coordinate a whole-system approach, and Health and Justice Coordinators in every probation region to improve links between prison and local drug and alcohol treatment services.
We are also expanding the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living Units where prisoners commit to remaining free of illicit drugs and alcohol, with regular drug testing and incentives. We now have over 60 of these wings across the estate, and are aiming to reach up to 100 by March 2025. This will dramatically expand the number of prisoners who have access to these wings.
We are committed to tackling the supply of drugs and alcohol into prison. Our £100m Security Investment Programme completed in March 2022 and delivered 75 additional X-ray body scanners, resulting in full coverage across the closed male estate. We have also installed 84 X-ray baggage scanners at 49 sites, building on the rollout of our body scanners, drug trace detection machines and metal detection archways.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers have been dismissed for (a) supplying and (b) transporting drugs in the youth secure estate in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
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.
HM Prison & Probation Service has a zero-tolerance policy to drugs conveyed into prisons and take appropriate action to a small number of prison staff who break the rules. Our £100m Security Investment Programme, aimed at reducing crime in prisons, including reducing the conveyance of illicit items such as drugs and mobile phones, is ongoing. This includes increased resource to pursue corruption, as well as established a new ‘Prevent’ function, aimed at building staff resilience against corruption.
Below is a table showing the breakdown of staff dismissed from 2019 to Dec 2023 within the Youth Custody Service (YCS) for drug related offences.
Table 1
Year | Conveyance of drugs |
TOTAL | 1 |
2019 | 0 |
2020 | 0 |
2021 | 1 |
2022 | 0 |
2023 | 0 |
Source: Linkspace Case Management System.
Notes:
Linkspace is the Counter Corruption Unit’s (CCU) Case Management System used to record and track cases linked to corruption.
Data provided by the CCU have the following Caveats applied below;
1) The new Counter Corruption Unit came into being in April 2019, with a new structure and a change to ways of working. During the initial transition period, and prior to the introduction of the new Case Management System, it is possible that not all arrests were being captured.
2) Prior to April 2019, corruption in HMPPS was managed by the Corruption Prevention Unit (CPU). The CPU was a largely centralised unit focused on sanitising and disseminating all corruption related intelligence to the Police, with an individual Regional Corruption Prevention Manager (RCPM) in each geographical region offering advice and support to prisons in managing corruption, Hence data prior to April 2019 is not available.
3) Data includes Non-Directly Employed Staff (public or private) as they provide a service on behalf of HMPPS.
4) ‘Supplying and transporting’ of drugs in a prison falls under the definition of ‘conveyance of drugs’ and recorded on the CCU’s Case Management System to cases linked to drugs related offences.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign national offenders there are in the youth secure estate; and if she will provide a breakdown of those figures by offence type.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As of 30 November 2023, the latest date for which figures are available, there were 71 foreign nationals in the youth secure estate. A breakdown by offence type is given in the table below.
Table 1: Number of foreign national children and young people by offence group, 30 November 2023
Offence Group 1 | Number 2 |
Breach of statutory order | * |
Domestic burglary | * |
Drugs | * |
Other 3 | 10 |
Robbery | * |
Sexual Offences | * |
Violence Against the Person | 44 |
Total | 71 |
Notes:
Data Source: Further breakdown of youth custody data for November 2023.
Since 2010, we have removed over 55,000 foreign national offenders from our prisons, immigration removal centres and the community. Between January 2019 and September 2023, we returned 16,676 FNOs.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers have been dismissed for (a) supplying and (b) transporting drugs in prison in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
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.
HM Prison & Probation Service has a zero-tolerance policy to drugs conveyed into prisons and take appropriate action in respect of the small number of prison staff who break the rules. Our £100m Security Investment Programme (SIP), aimed at reducing crime in prisons, including reducing the conveyance of illicit items such as drugs and mobile phones, is ongoing. This includes increased resource to pursue corruption, as well as established a new ‘Prevent’ function, aimed at building staff resilience against corruption.
Our £100 million Security Investment Programme aimed to improve security with a focus on technology, such as X-ray body scanners. This aimed to improve our ability to detect and disrupt drugs from entering prisons, supported by enhancements to intelligence and counter corruption capabilities.
Over the last few years, we have continued to increase in capacity and deliver our counter-corruption strategy. Through the £100m SIP investment over 100 new staff were also recruited into the Counter-Corruption Unit. This includes regional Prevent teams dedicated to building staff resilience through training, awareness raising and individual support.
Given the investment and measures outlined above, the increase in instances outlined below may reflect better detecting and reporting of drugs conveyance, as opposed to an increase in activity.
*Prison Officer (and PCO) Conveyance of Drugs 2019- Dec 2023 | |
Year | Amount |
2019 | 10 |
2020 | 19 |
2021 | 16 |
2022 | 21 |
2023 | 21 |
Source: Linkspace Case Management System.
Notes:
Linkspace is the Counter Corruption Unit’s (CCU) Case Management System used to record and track cases linked to corruption.
Data provided by the Counter Corruption (CCU) have the following Caveats applied below;
1) Prior to April 2019, corruption in HMPPS was managed by the Corruption Prevention Unit (CPU). The CPU was a largely centralised unit focused on sanitising and disseminating all corruption related intelligence to the Police, with an individual Regional Corruption
Prevention Manager (RCPM) in each geographical region offering advice and support to prisons in managing corruption, hence data prior to April 2019 is not available.
2) ‘Supplying and transporting’ of drugs in a prison falls under the definition of ‘conveyance of drugs’ and recorded on the CCU’s Case Management System to cases linked to drugs related offences.
3) Data includes Prison Custodial Officer (PCO) and they are the equivalent to a Prison Officer in a privately run establishment.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information his Department holds on the number and proportion of prisoners with addiction-related health issues who did not engage in treatment in prison in 2022.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice works closely with NHS England to ensure that all prisoners who need it have access to high-quality substance misuse treatment. All prisoners receive a comprehensive health screening within their first week to identify drug misuse and related health needs, and agree a plan for recovery-focused treatment. To support and encourage more prisoners to make progress in recovery, we are rolling out a range of interventions, including increasing the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living wings, recruiting dedicated staff in prisons to focus on tackling drugs, and supporting prisoners to access community treatment pre-release.
The Ministry of Justice does not hold substance misuse healthcare data on prisoners, which is managed by the Department of Health and Social care through the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS).
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisons have a drug free wing.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As part of the ambitious cross-Government Drug Strategy, the Ministry of Justice is rolling out a range of interventions to support prisoners off drugs and into recovery. We now have 70 prisons with an Incentivised Substance-Free Living (ISFL) wing, where prisoners commit to remaining free of illicit drugs with regular drug testing and incentives. We aim to reach up to 100 ISFLs by March 2025.
7 of these prisons also have a Drug Recovery Wing, where we are testing a new approach to help prisoners with an opiate dependency achieve abstinence. These Drug Recovery Wings will support prisoners who are clinically ready to transition off opioid substitution treatment and be abstinent from both illicit drugs and prescribed substitutes.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisons have a drug recovery wing.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As part of the ambitious cross-Government Drug Strategy, we are rolling out a wide range of interventions to support prisoners off drugs and into recovery. We have 7 prisons with a Drug Recovery Wing. These wings are testing a new approach to help prisoners with an opiate dependency achieve abstinence.
Alongside this, we are increasing the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living (ISFL) wings, where prisoners commit to remaining free of illicit drugs with regular drug testing and incentives. We now have 70 prisons with an ISFL and aim to reach up to 100 by March 2025.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 8 January 2024 to Question 7583 on Prisons: Drugs, how many random mandatory drug tests carried out between 2018 and 2023 were positive.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Between April 2018 and March 2023, there were 25,323 positive rMDT tests for both traditional drugs and psychoactive substances. Data for April to December 2023 will be published as part of the 2023-24 Annual Digest.
No new Official Statistics on rMDT positivity have been published since the year to March 2020, because since the start of the COVID pandemic testing levels and the number of prisons with sufficient testing have been too low to provide robust data.
The range of drugs tested in the rMDT panel is subject to change in response to new emerging drug types and new patterns of drug use. This is necessary to ensure our testing approach is targeting the right substances. These limitations mean no robust rate of positive tests can be calculated from the above data and this number of positive tests should not be compared to the number of tests.
Care is taken when processing and analysing returns, but the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. Although shown to the last case, the figures may not be accurate to that level.
This does not include tests that were spoilt or lost in transit on the way to the laboratory.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prisons have a drug recovery wing.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As part of the ambitious cross-Government Drug Strategy, we are rolling out a wide range of interventions to support prisoners off drugs and into recovery. This includes testing a new approach to help prisoners with an opiate dependency achieve abstinence, with seven abstinence-focused Drug Recovery Wings in operation across the estate. Alongside this, we are increasing the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living (ISFL) units, where prisoners commit to remaining free of illicit drugs with regular drug testing and incentives. We now have 68 ISFLs in operation (55% of prisons), and aim to reach up to 100 ISFLs by March 2025.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many drug recovery programmes were delivered in prisons in (a) 2010, (b) 2018 and (c) 2023.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Drug treatment in prisons is commissioned by NHS England, and data from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System is held by the Department of Health and Social Care. Published data on drug treatment in secure settings, including numbers in treatment, is available dating back to 2015. This can be found at:
As part of the ambitious cross-Government Drug Strategy, the Ministry of Justice is rolling out a range of interventions to support prisoners off drugs and into recovery. This includes increasing the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living wings from 25 in summer 2022 to 68 now, and testing a new approach to help prisoners with an opiate dependency achieve abstinence, with the opening of 7 abstinence-based Drug Recovery Wings. We are also recruiting dedicated staff in prisons to focus on tackling drugs, and supporting prisoners to engage with community treatment pre-release.