Young Offender Institutions: Ethnic Groups
(asked on 20th November 2023) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the attrition rate was for ethnic minority staff in the youth secure estate in each reporting year since 2010.
The leaving rates of staff who declared their ethnicity and who work in prisons currently part of the Youth Custody Service are given in the table below.
In late 2021, HM Prison Service launched a retention tool kit to help Governors to tackle the main drivers of attrition in their prisons. We are using the data from this and enhanced exit interviews to better understand why employees are leaving.
HM Prison Service made a significant investment in pay for prison staff through the 2023/24 pay awards. This delivered an increase in base pay of at least 4% for all staff between bands 2 to 11, alongside further targeted pay rises for our lowest paid staff of up to £2,500 which we hope will help in reducing leaving rates.
Since April 2022, HM Prison Service have invested in several new initiatives to improve the experience of our new joiners and increase retention of our employees. These include a new peer-to-peer learning scheme, the introduction of mentors for new staff, a supervision pilot in two prisons, and new leadership training in prisons facing retention challenges.
Table 1: Underlying leaving rate of permanent staff in Youth Custody Estate, by declared ethnicity, for 12 months to 31 March each year since 2010, and latest position as at 30 September 2023
12 Months to | Ethnic minority leavers | Ethnic minority average staff in post | Ethnic minority leaving |
31/03/2010 | 5 | 162 | 3.1% |
31/03/2011 | 9 | 165 | 5.4% |
31/03/2012 | 6 | 160 | 3.8% |
31/03/2013 | 6 | 159 | 3.8% |
31/03/2014 | 8 | 148 | 5.4% |
31/03/2015 | 16 | 136 | 11.7% |
31/03/2016 | 5 | 131 | 3.8% |
31/03/2017 | 14 | 138 | 10.1% |
31/03/2018 | 11 | 136 | 8.1% |
31/03/2019 | 6 | 157 | 3.8% |
31/03/2020 | 27 | 207 | 13.1% |
31/03/2021 | 18 | 207 | 8.7% |
31/03/2022 | 22 | 216 | 10.2% |
31/03/2023 | 49 | 232 | 21.1% |
30/09/2023(p) | 55 | 249 | 22.1% |
Notes
- Leaving rates is calculated as number of leavers by ethnicity as a proportion of an average of all staff of that ethnicity, not all staff.
- Ethnicity is a self-declared field and is optional to complete.
- The leavers figures do not include voluntary early departure or redundancy.
- Permanent staff are those with a permanent contract of employment with HMPPS.
- The Youth Custody Service (YCS), created in April 2017 to oversee day-to-day management of young people up to 18 years of age in the young people’s estate. Youth Custody Estate includes the following prisons: Cookham Wood, Feltham, Werrington, Wetherby and Medway Secure Training Centre (which closed in March 2020).
- Internal transfers within HMPPS are not included.
(p) Figures relating to current financial year are provisional and may be subject to change in future.