ANNEX
Extract from a letter to the Chairman
from the Director General, HM Prison Service
I undertook to write back to you on some points
of detail.
Paul Stinchcombe asked why young men were locked
up all day at Northallerton. They are not. Currently young men
at Northallerton spend 18 hours per week engaged in purposeful
activity. I accept that this is far from ideal, but when set against
the figures that we achieve at Feltham (14.9 hours), Brinsford
(20.3 hours) and Werrington (36.3 hours) you will begin to get
a feel for the broad range of service delivery. I am not seeking
to excuse Northallerton; merely to set it against performance
elsewhere. This will, of course, be something that you will wish
to delve into some more when you make your visits to young offenders
establishments. I would certainly welcome your views on this specific
point after you have made your visits.
Humfrey Malins asked me about the numbers of
staff we employ. In response to his preliminary question I said
there were 136 prisons. I should have said 137. I went on to explain
that we employ about 44,000 staff. For accuracy, on 31 January
2001 we employed 43,843 staff. Of these, 1,152 were Prison Governors.
All candidates for the Accelerated Promotion
Scheme join as prison officers, although they would expect to
reach Principal Officer within a year, and Junior Governor within
two to three years, so the progression is fairly swift. The initial
salary for a prison officer who joins the Service is £15,842.
On promotion to Principal Officer the salary is £25,453,
and then on promotion to Junior Governor the salary rises to £30,336.
If the officer is employed in London there is an additional weighting
allowance of £2,350.
Michael Fabricant asked about the incidents
of self-harm in prison during the last year. I think it would
be more useful to look at a slightly wider period.
Our new suicide prevention and self-harm policy
aims to reduce both the numbers of suicides and cases of self-harm.
Definitions of self-harm and recording practices are currently
under review and figures traditionally reported for overall self-harm
cases are not yet available for the period since March 2000. The
total for 1999-00 was 7,172 compared to 7,398 in 1998-99 and 7,023
in 1997-98.
More recent information is available about serious
self-harm cases. As I explained to the Committee, while the numbers
and rate of prisoner suicides fell during 2000 (by 11 per cent
from 91 to 81), the incidence of self-harm incidents by hanging
and strangulation increased. It rose by nearly 50 per cent to
3,542 [(see table below)]. We believe that this sharp increase
was most probably because of greater reporting, although we are
still, as part of our work on our strategy against suicide, investigating
the reasons more closely.
The general prison population contains very
large numbers of people with factors such as drug dependency and
substance abuse which substantially raise their risk of suicide
and self-harm. 14 per cent of male and 20 per cent of female sentenced
prisoners have borderline personality disorders compared to 1.8
per cent in the outside community.
Table: Self-harm incidents by hanging and strangulation in
HM Prisons in England and Wales 1998-00.
| Establishment Type |
Calendar Year
|
Total
|
|
1998
|
1999
|
2000
|
|
| cat B |
27
|
14
|
36
|
77
|
| cat B local |
522
|
488
|
797
|
1,807
|
| cat C |
44
|
55
|
68
|
167
|
| dispersal |
25
|
17
|
26
|
68
|
| open |
3
|
6
|
1
|
10
|
| remand |
111
|
87
|
83
|
281
|
| YOI |
79
|
112
|
167
|
358
|
| Female |
53
|
120
|
211
|
382
|
| Contract |
45
|
51
|
34
|
140
|
| PECS* |
71
|
88
|
93
|
252
|
| TOTAL |
985
|
1,041
|
1,516
|
3,542
|
* Prisoner Escort and Custody Services
Martin Narey
15 February 2001
|
