Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many uses of force in each year from 2010 were (a) recorded at each high-security institution and (b) involved staff with less than three years’ experience.

Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service require that all use of force in prisons must be rigorously reported and locally recorded. However, the data collated at the national level throughout all of the period specified is of unsatisfactory quality and consistency. Satisfactory nationally-collated data relating to the frequency of use of force in prisons is available for the period 2008/09 – 2011/12, and was published as part of the Equalities Annual Review (2011-2012).

HMPPS are committed to ensuring that all use of force in prisons is lawful and reflects the highest standards. As part of our commitment to ensuring robust governance over the use of force we are working to identify ways to improve the quality, granularity and availability of use of force data locally and nationally.

The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.