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3 Mar 2010 : Column 1252W—continued
Prison Service: Racial discrimination
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prison officers have been dismissed on grounds of racist behaviour in each of the last three years. [319560]
Maria Eagle: Staff working in the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) are expected to meet high standards of professional and personal conduct. Behaviour constituting discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying-including instances which involve a racial element-will not be tolerated and, depending on the individual circumstances of the case, would fall under the category of gross misconduct and would invariably lead to dismissal.
Details of disciplinary outcomes are recorded centrally according to the type of misconduct rather than the actual offence committed by the member of staff. According to central records, five prison officers have been dismissed from public sector Prison Service establishments on
grounds of racist behaviour since 1 January 2007. A breakdown of this information is provided in the following table.
| Calendar year | Dismissals( 1) |
| (1) Data on disciplinary dismissals are derived from the HR Discipline Database and the Shared Service Personnel Management Database. As with any large-scale administrative systems these are liable to a certain level of inaccuracy. Cases that are ongoing or subject to internal appeal have not been included. | |
There may be additional cases on the central databases which have not been recorded as racist in nature. In order to confirm the accuracy of this data, NOMS would need to contact all public sector Prison Service establishments, ask them to check their local records for the period required and ask them to submit this information to Headquarters so that the central records can be updated. This would incur disproportionate cost.
NOMS believes that the key to long-term success in tackling unacceptable behaviour is to embed a sustainable diversity infrastructure across the service. A major initiative in this area has been the development of Challenge It Change It, a new training course and diversity toolkit. This is being introduced across the public sector prison service and NOMS HQ and is receiving very positive feedback.
Prisoners: Education and Drugs
Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 23 February 2010, Official Report, column 508W, on prisoners: education and drugs, what proportion of offenders in the (a) CARAT programme and (b) Young People's Substance Misuse Service programme successfully completed the course of drug intervention in each year since 2005-06. [319659]
Maria Eagle: The Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice and Throughcare service (CARATs) is the key non-clinical gateway drug treatment service in prisons for prisoners aged over 18. The Young People's Substance Misuse Service (YPSMS) provides a similar service for all young people (aged 15-18) in custody. Neither CARATs nor YPSMS is an intervention in its own right. Both provide a gateway to support, information, structured interventions and resettlement planning for prisoners with substance misuse problems. As a consequence, there is not necessarily a point where a prisoner could be considered to have successfully or unsuccessfully completed their engagement with either service.
The following table shows the number of initial assessments carried out by CARATs and YPSMS in each of the full financial years since 2005-09. This gives an indication of the number of prisoners and young people engaged with drug treatment services in custody, although the level of engagement will vary according to individuals' needs.
Prisons: Sanitation
David Howarth: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what his most recent estimate is of the number of prison cells without in-cell sanitation; and what plans his Department has to install in-cell sanitation in those cells. [319481]
Maria Eagle: There are about 2,000 cells on normal location across the prison estate that do not have integral sanitation but which have electronic unlocking facilities, which permits a prisoner to leave the cell to access sanitation and washing facilities on a call system. This system was approved as a method of ending 'slopping out', as set out in the Judge Tumin report of 1989. There are also some further cells on the prison estate without integral sanitation but which permit prisoners to have open access to central sanitation facilities via their privacy locks This was also acceptable to Judge Tumin as a method of ending of ending "slopping out".
Cells with the current electronic unlocking facilities are too small for the installation of integral sanitation.
Probation Boards: Wales
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many members there were of each probation board in Wales on 31 December 2009. [319553]
Maria Eagle: The board members on each of the two probation areas and two probation trusts in Wales on 31 December 2009 were as follows:
| Probation area/trust | Board members (including the chair and chief officer/chief executive) |
Probation Officers: Wales
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many probation officers in each pay band at each grade were employed in each probation area in Wales on 31 December 2009. [319552]
Maria Eagle: There is only one pay band and grade for probation officers (introduced via the National Job Evaluation Scheme), which is Band 4. The number employed on 31 December 2009 were as follows:
| Area/trust | Probation officers |
| (1) Whole-time equivalent. | |
Probation: Per Capita Costs
David Howarth: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what his most recent estimate is of average annual cost to the public purse per offender of (a) probation supervision, (b) probation supervision with a drug programme attachment, (c) probation supervision with an anger management programme attachment and (d) probation supervision with a domestic violence programme attachment. [319450]
Maria Eagle: The funding for the supervision of offenders and the delivery of programmes in the community is part of the general grant given to probation areas or trusts. The costs will vary and depend on a number of factors including the risk presented by the individual, the level of supervision required, the programme the individual attends, and the arrangements for delivery in the particular area. It is not possible to accurately disaggregate the cost of this work.
Full costs of probation services will be collected and published in order to benchmark the whole probation system by the end of 2011.
Probation: Reoffenders
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what his most recent estimate of the rate of re-offending after two years was following completion of a (a) domestic violence, (b) cognitive behaviour and (c) drugs programme in each probation area in Wales. [319549]
Maria Eagle: The Ministry of Justice does not produce statistics on reoffending rates following the completion of programmes. National Statistics on the reoffending of adults released from custody or commencing a court order or suspended sentence order are published annually for England and Wales; they are not broken down for Wales alone. The Ministry of Justice also publishes local reoffending data for all offenders on the probation caseload, which are available at the Probation Area level. These data measure the reoffending of all offenders under probation supervision over three months. For more information about these statistics please see:
and
There is international research evidence (but no specific Welsh research that we are aware of) showing that general offending behaviour programmes, anger management/violence reduction programmes and some
drugs interventions are effective in reducing reoffending, although the evidence regarding domestic violence programmes is limited and remains tentative.
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what his most recent estimate is of the rate of re-offending after two years following completion of a (a) a probation or supervision order, (b) a probation or supervision order with conditions and (c) unpaid work in each probation area in Wales. [319550]
Maria Eagle: The requested data are not available. National reoffending data are based on offences committed within one year of offenders' release from custody or commencement of a court order under probation supervision, and cover England and Wales as a whole.
In addition to the national statistics on reoffending, the Ministry of Justice publishes local reoffending data for all offenders on the probation caseload. These data are available at the probation area level. These data measure the reoffending of all offenders under probation supervision over a period of three months. The results are produced by aggregating four quarters of data. Therefore the number of offenders quoted in the following table is approximately four times the number of offenders on the caseload at any one time.
The most recent reoffending rates for offenders on court orders under probation supervision for probation areas in Wales are shown in Table 1.
| Table 1: Local reoffending rates for probation areas in Wales, 1 October2008 to 30 September 2009 | ||
| Probation area | Number of offenders | Proportion of offenders that reoffended within three months |
A breakdown by requirement type is not available.
Further information on the reoffending of adult offenders on the probation caseload is available at:
Further information on the National Statistics on adult reoffending is available at:
Probation: Wales
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people completed and passed a probation programme in each probation area in Wales in each year since 2005. [319548]
Maria Eagle: The Accredited Programme Completions for each full year from 2005 are as follows:
| 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09 | |
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many staff of each grade were employed by each probation area in Wales on 31 December (a) 2009 and (b) 1999. [319551]
Maria Eagle: Data on how many staff of each grade were employed by Wales Probation Areas/Trusts on 31 December 2009 are as follows:
| Grade | North Wales( 1) | Gwent( 1) | South Wales( 1) | Dyfed-Powys( 1) |
| (1) WTE = whole-time equivalent (2) Acting | ||||
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