Both inmates and prison guards are enduring a sharp rise in violence, new Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures show.
Prisoner-on-prisoner assaults have risen by almost one quarter in the past year. And there was a 38% increase in assaults by prisoners on guards and other prison staff.
The figures reveal that there were 80 assaults on staff per 1,000 prisoners last year, compared to 58 per 1,000 prisoners in 2015 and 43 per 1,000 prisoners in 2014.
In 2016, there were 224 recorded prisoner-on-prisoner assaults per 1,000 prisoners (19,088 in total across the prison estate)—a 23% increase on the previous year’s tally.
In 2015, by comparison, 181 prisoners in every 1,000 were assaulted by their fellow inmates. In 2014, there were 147 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults per 1,000 inmates.
More prisoners succeeded in making a break for freedom. In 2016, seven prisoners escaped from prison or from prison escorts, compared to five in 2015 and one in 2014, and eight prisoners escaped from contractor escorts.
To tackle the escalating violence, the MoJ says it has introduced a range of measures, including a ‘five-minute intervention’ programme and ‘body worn video cameras’. It has introduced countermeasures to the threat arising from psychoactive substances, is gathering data on risks, and has established a ‘violence reduction taskforce’ to identify best practice and provide support to prisons.
The MoJ figures, released last week, also record that 64 courts closed down. More than 31,000 children were involved in public law cases, and nearly 73,000 children were involved in private family law cases. There were nearly 115,000 applications for divorce, and more than 590,000 applications to register Lasting Powers of Attorney.
In the civil and administrative field, there were 1.8 million claims to county courts, and more than 459,000 cases received in tribunals.
