Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to help ensure that prison staffing levels are sufficient to maintain security.

Effective prison security is a prerequisite for the safe and stable regimes required to promote prisoner rehabilitation, and sufficient levels of skilled frontline staff are fundamental to delivering secure and rehabilitative prison regimes. Against a challenging labour market, we have recruitment campaigns at all prisons where there are current or projected needs, and provide enhanced support to the prisons in the most challenging parts of the estate. HMPPS offers several routes to become a prison officer, including:

• A ‘Prison Officer Alumni’ scheme, which encourages former officers to return to the Service, bringing back their previous experience.
• Advance into Justice scheme, which helps Armed Forces leavers, veterans, and their spouses into Prison Officer roles.
• First Deployment: new recruits will apply to a national campaign and will be allocated to a ‘home’ prison but will be deployed to a different site for the first 23 months of service, with additional financial incentives.
• The Operational Support Grades to prison officer fast-track scheme, giving individuals the chance to use their previous experience in prisons and take the next step in their career through a streamlined process.

To help improve Prison Officer retention, HMPPS has created a retention strategy which is linked to wider activities around employee experience, employee lifecycle and staff engagement at work. As of December 2025, the resignation rate for Band 3-5 Prison Officers was the lowest it has been in the last four years.

We have specialist staff and equipment to stop the smuggling of contraband in prisons – such as drugs, weapons and mobile phones – which can fuel violence and create instability.

We remain committed to ensuring prisons are sufficiently resourced and that we retain and build levels of experience, both of which are fundamental to delivering quality outcomes in prisons.