Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers have been (a) arrested, (b) charged, and (c) prosecuted for having illicit relationships with prison inmates in each year since 2020, broken down by offence group.

The table below shows the number of prison officers at Bands 3-5 convicted in each of the last five years of an offence of misconduct in public office, where the offence related to an inappropriate relationship with a prisoner.

An inappropriate relationship is defined as any relationship that compromises a staff member’s ability to appropriately perform their duties.

The figures in this table have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.