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.

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

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.