Prisons: Death Statistics

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, the figures are perhaps connected in this way: we want to make sure that we have as few self-inflicted harm incidents as possible and as few assaults on staff as possible. On staff, we have rolled out body-worn video cameras and we have better drug testing coming into prisons. But I and the Government are far from laid back about the current situation; we want to get these figures down further. But I point out to the House that we have seen some significant improvements in the figures recently.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, what training and support are prison officers given to deal with these appalling problems?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, prison officers go through rigorous training and are given significant support. We have put in place a system whereby prison officers who are working with particular prisoners who are perceived to be at risk of self-harm have time in their schedules to sit down and focus on those prisoners. As opposed to having to fit this in among their other tasks, particular time is set in their programmes so that they can devote it to their prisoners.