Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of prisoners who have neurodivergent conditions; and what plans they have, if any, to introduce a common screening system for these conditions throughout the criminal justice system.

In December 2020 the Ministry of Justice commissioned the Justice Inspectorates to conduct ‘An Evidence Review of Neurodiversity in the Criminal Justice System’. The Evidence Review Report, published July 2021, suggests that potentially half of the adult prison population has some form of neurodivergence.

Currently, on prison reception, prisoners are screened to identify neurodivergent need, with 22/23 figures suggesting that 31% of prisoners have some form of neurodivergent need. Full diagnosis of a neurodevelopmental disorder, disability or cognitive impairment would be conducted by Healthcare in Prison, which is delivered by the National Health Service England.

On 25 January 2023 the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published a six-month update to the Cross-Government Neurodiversity Action Plan. The six-month update details agreement from all criminal justice agencies to adopt a needs identification approach to screening for neurodivergence. Instead of a focus on diagnostic criteria, criminal justice agencies should seek to identify what reasonable adjustments can be made to support neurodivergent people at each stage of the process and this information should be shared between agencies. However, whilst consistency of approach is necessary, it would be inappropriate to use a single tool universally across all agencies because the time available to identify an individual’s needs and the types of reasonable adjustment available will vary at every stage of the system.