Prison Officers: Wales
(asked on 1st May 2024) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison (a) officers and (b) other staff have been (i) investigated and (ii) dismissed in relation to (a) the conveyance of drugs and (b) conducting inappropriate relationships with prisoners in Wales in each year since 2019.
In each year since 2019, there have been 2 staff in Welsh prisons who were investigated or recommended for dismissal for trafficking through internal disciplinary procedures.
Data relating to staff investigated or recommended for dismissal for having an inappropriate relationship with prisoners/ex-prisoners is held and is provided in table 1 below. The annual HMPPS staff equalities report covers staffing information, including investigations and conduct & disciplinary action, and the latest publication covers data up to 31 March 2023. This data does not include criminal investigations of prison officers or staff by law enforcement.
Table 1: HMPPS staff in Public Sector Prisons1 in Wales who were (i) investigated2 and (ii) recommended for dismissal3,4 for having an inappropriate relationship with a prisoner/ex-prisoner5, in each financial year from 2018/19 to 2022/236(p)
Financial year | Band 3-5 prison officers7 | All other prison staff | ||
Headcount of staff investigated | Headcount of staff recommended for dismissal | Headcount of staff investigated | Headcount of staff recommended for dismissal | |
2018/19 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
2019/20 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
2020/21 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
2021/22 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
2022/23 | 6 | ~ | ~ | ~ |
Notes
1. Excludes any privately managed prisons.
2. Figures relate to formal investigations with an outcome recorded in the year. Staff subject to at least one investigation that was concluded during the year.
3. Conduct and discipline cases are defined as where a penalty has been imposed on a member of HMPPS staff for a reason of conduct. Staff with at least one conduct and discipline case concluded during the year.
4. A dismissal case is defined as where at least one of the charges relating to an individual is recommended for dismissal. Information on the outcomes of any appeal is not included.
5. Allegations which meet a criminal threshold will be referred to the Police for investigation. If a criminal justice outcome is secured, this will result in a summary dismissal as per PSI 10/2016 Conduct and Discipline and will not be recorded against a specific ‘type’ of misconduct in the Conduct and Discipline data. 6. Financial year runs from 01 April to 31 March. Latest published data on Investigations is up to 31 March 2023. 7. Band 3-5 Officers includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officers (incl specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officers, and Band 5 / Custodial Managers.
~ denotes suppressed values of 2 or fewer or other values which would allow values of 2 or fewer to be derived by subtraction. Low numbers are suppressed to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 2018.
(p) Provisional data. There may be minor changes to figures in future due to additional data being recorded on the reporting system.