Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what were the rates of self-harm by prisoners under Imprisonment for Public Protection in the last five years.

Please see the attached table showing the rates of self-harm by prisoners under Imprisonment for Public Protection^1,2,3,4,5 for the last five years that data is available.

The numbers used to derive the rates of self-harm for this PQ are published. The quarterly population figures are taken from the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly publication and then averaged across the calendar year. The self-harm incidents are taken from the annual self-harm in prison custody tables from the Safety in Custody Quarterly publication. The rates are calculated using these figures, and the methodology described in footnote 5 below.

(1) Figures include incidents during contracted out escorts. Figures do not include incidents at Medway STC.

(2) In prisons, as in the community, it is not possible to count self-harm incidents with absolute accuracy. In prison custody, however, such incidents are more likely to be detected and counted. Care needs to be taken when comparing figures shown here with other sources where data may be less complete.

(3) A new sentence - Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) - was introduced in 2005.

(4) The definition of IPP prisoners included in this analysis only includes unreleased prisoners. IPP prisoners who have been recalled to prison after a release are not included.

(5) Self-harm incident rates are derived by 1,000 x (number of incidents in year)/(average population for year). Prison population figures are from the Offender Management Statistics quarterly bulletin and are averaged across the four quarterly population figures for each year.