Prisoners Release
Mr. Burns: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what steps he plans to take to reduce the number of prisoners released in error. [316246]
Maria Eagle: While errors are made in only a very small proportion of the total discharges of prisoners in any year, this issue is one that is taken very seriously. The National Offender Management Service has put in place a number of measures to reduce these errors including:
all release in error incidents are reported immediately by telephone to headquarters as a serious incident;
formal investigations are required in all cases and the learning from these investigations acted upon. Where individual (rather than system) failings have been identified disciplinary action has been taken;
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Prison governors and regional custodial managers have been required to review sentence calculation and discharge procedures and ensure additional managerial attention is given to this area; and
Additional guidance has been provided to prisons in areas where it was discovered that detailed legislative or policy issues about eligibility for release had been misunderstood by prisons.
Prisoners: Body Searches
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many intimate searches were carried out in prisons in each of the last five years; [316186]
(2) how many strip searches were carried out in prisons in each of the last five years; [316187]
(3) whether CCTV is installed in every visitor hall in prisons in England and Wales. [316188]
Maria Eagle: The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) policy on searching within prisons does not permit intimate searches to be conducted.
Full searches (commonly known as strip-searches) may be carried out in order to detect items of contraband secreted on the person. NOMS' National Security Framework permits establishments to full search prisoners both on a routine and intelligence-led basis. Visitors and staff may be full-searched only in exceptional circumstances. Records of full searches conducted in prisons are not held centrally. To provide the information requested would involve requesting and collating information from all prisons which could be done only at disproportionate cost.
CCTV cameras are widely deployed in visit rooms across the prison estate. They help to reduce and detect the passing of contraband between visitors and prisoners and to record, for evidential reasons, information on any incidents that may occur. However, details of equipment installed in visits rooms are not held centrally. To collate this information across the prison estate would incur disproportionate cost.
Prisons: Death
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody has spent on website maintenance and development in the last 12 months. [316317]
Mr. Straw: The Independent Advisory Panel's official website was formally launched on the 3 February 2010. The cost of the design, development and build of this website was £22,400 excluding VAT. The maintenance of the site will be performed in-house by the IAP's Secretariat, at no additional cost.
Prisons: Dogs
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the outcome was of the national strategic review of the deployment of sniffer dogs throughout the prison estate. [316190]
Maria Eagle:
In his report ‘Disrupting the supply of illicit drugs into prisons’ David Blakey recommended that the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) establish an internal review to determine whether drug detection dogs and their handlers are distributed effectively
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around the prison estate, and that the management processes for handlers are robust. The Government accepted this and all of David Blakey's other recommendations.
NOMS has now undertaken a review of the distribution and management of drug detection dogs. Further work is ongoing.
Prisons: Drugs
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will publish the updated Supply Reduction: Good Practice Guide issued to prisons in England and Wales. [316184]
Maria Eagle: The “Prison Drugs Supply Reduction—A Good Practice Guide” contains detailed information about the methods and tactics employed for disrupting the supply of drugs in prisons. As such, in its entirety it is a considerable asset to those wishing to smuggle drugs into prisons. Publication would, or would be likely to, prejudice the maintenance of security and good order in prisons. We therefore have no plans to publish the guide.
Prisons: Sanitation
David Howarth: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what recent assessment he has made of (a) the extent of the practice of slopping out in prisons in England and Wales and (b) the compatibility of this practice with the Human Rights Act 1998. [316172]
Maria Eagle: “Slopping out” for normal prisoner accommodation i.e. using a bucket to urinate/defecate ended as official Prison Service practice on 12 April 1996.
Referendums: Electoral Systems
Mr. Dai Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate has been made of the cost of a referendum on electoral reform; and what assessment has been made of the level of public support for such a referendum. [316545]
Mr. Wills: Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 the Electoral Commission is responsible for the conduct of referendums.
The Government have not made a detailed estimate of the likely cost of holding a referendum. We have previously said that, as a guide, we expect the cost of running a UK-wide referendum to be similar to the cost of a general election. In 2005 the general election cost something in excess of £80 million.
There are however, a number of key differences between the running of a general election and the running of a referendum—for example, the role of the Electoral Commission and the entitlements to send communications to voters—and as such the cost of a UK-wide referendum would not be exactly the same as a general election.
The Government have not made an assessment of the level of public support for a referendum.
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Sentencing
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people were sentenced for failure to answer bail in 2008; and what the average (a) fine and (b) custodial sentence imposed for such offences was in that period. [316324]
Mr. Straw: Data held centrally on sentencing show only the sentencing of principal offences. Failure to appear may be sentenced as a principal offence but can be sentenced with other more serious offences. In such cases the sentence given for failure to appear is not recorded centrally. There were 17,351 cases where a sentence for failure to appear is recorded for 2008. Of these 7,527 received fines and the average fine was £68.52. A further 2,347 received immediate custody and the average sentence length was 25 days.
The requested information is shown in the following table.
The data are presented on the principal offence basis. Where an offender has been sentenced for more than one offence the principal offence is the one for which the heaviest sentence was imposed. Where the same sentence has been imposed for two or more offences the principal offence is the one for which the statutory maximum is most severe.
| Total sentenced, average fine and average custodial sentence length for failure to answer bail(1), 2008 | |
|
| Number/£ |
| (1) Bail Act 1976 S.6 Notes: 1. These figures have been drawn from administrative data systems. 2. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system | |
Sexual Offences
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people received a (a) caution, (b) suspended prison sentence, (c) community sentence and (d) conditional or absolute discharge for (i) rape, (ii) sexual assault and (iii) sexual activity with a child in 2008. [316325]
Mr. Straw: The requested information is shown in the following table.
The data are presented on the principal offence basis. Where an offender has been sentenced for more than one offence the principal offence is the one for which the heaviest sentence was imposed, where the same
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sentence is imposed for two or more offences the principal offence is the one for which the statutory maximum is most severe.
| Sentences for rape, sexual assault and sexual activity with a child, 2008 | |
|
| Number |
| (1) Includes rape and attempted rape of a female/male over 16, under 16 and under 13 (2) Includes Assault on a female/male by penetration, assault on a female/male under 13 by penetration, sexual assault on a female/male, and sexual assault on a female/male under 13 (3) Includes offences under S.4, S.8, S.9, S.10, S.11 and S.12 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Does not include familial sexual offences under S.25 and S.26 | |
Youth Custody
Mr. Burrowes: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 21 January 2010, Official Report, column 458W, on remand in custody, how many young people of each ethnicity aged (a) 10, (b) 11, (c) 12, (d) 13, (e) 14, (f) 15, (g) 16 and (h) 17 years have been (i) remanded in custody and (ii) sentenced to custody in each of the last five years. [316395]
Maria Eagle: Figures which relate to all prison establishments in England and Wales for the years requested are shown in the tables which have been placed in the Library.
Youth Justice
David Howarth:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 25 January 2010, Official Report, column 705W, on prisoners on remand, how many juveniles remanded in custody were
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subsequently
(a)
acquitted and
(b)
given a non-custodial sentence in (i) a magistrates court and (ii) the Crown court in 2008. [316176]
Maria Eagle: The previously supplied table that showed data relating to the number of juveniles remanded in custody who were subsequently acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence in each year between 2003 and 2007 has been updated to include data for 2008 as follows:
| The estimated number of juveniles(1) remanded in custody(2) who were subsequently acquitted or received a non-custodial sentence(3) at magistrates' courts and the Crown court, England and Wales 2003-08(4) | ||||||
|
| 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008(5) |
| (1) Defined as being aged 10 to 17 at the date of appearance in court. (2) Includes those remanded in custody at any stage of proceedings at magistrates and crown courts who may also have been given bail at some stage of those proceedings. (3) Magistrates courts figures exclude those committed for trial or sentence at the crown court. Non-custodial sentences include discharges, fines, community sentences, and a number of other sentences that do not involve incarceration. Acquitted includes proceedings discontinued, discharged, withdrawn and dismissed. (4) Excludes convictions for Cardiff magistrates court for April, July and August 2008. (5) Indicates that the data are provisional and subject to change. Notes: 1. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 2. It is known that in some police force areas, information on remand decisions is not always readily available to those coding court proceedings returns. In certain cases, the return may be mistakenly coded as if no remand had taken place. For magistrates court proceedings, the number of remands and more importantly, the number which are in custody, are believed to be under-recorded in total. As the breakdown of remands into bail and custody cases for a number of forces is not accurate for a number of forces, estimates have to be made to provide national figures. Source: Prepared by Justice Statistics Analytical Services. | ||||||