Prisoners' Transfers: Pregnancy

(asked on 16th October 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many pregnant women have been transported in prisoner transport vehicles in each of the last three years.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 23rd October 2019

A total of 1,700 pregnant women moves took place between August 2016 and September 2019. This does not necessarily equate to the number of individuals transported, as the same prisoner may have been moved more than once. Pregnant women are moved in multi-purpose vehicles as opposed to cellular vehicles in all but exceptional circumstances. A breakdown of journeys is provided in the table below.

Year

Number of female moves

2016 (August – December)

249

2017

640

2018

533

2019 (January – September)

278

Below is a table showing the number of instances where both women and men have been transported in the same vehicle.

Year

Number of instances OF failure to separate females

2017

81

2018

5

2019 YTD

9

The Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) contract is specifically designed for the movement of prisoners in cellular vehicles that meets MOJ standards. The contracts include a Contract Delivery Indicator which requires women to be separated from men for at least 97% of all journeys made. The current national performance is 99.89% of total journeys made.

Private providers continue to play an important role in the prison estate. HMPPS will continue to closely monitor the performance of all providers and we will not hesitate to take action where standards fall short.

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