Steve Rotheram – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve Rotheram on 2016-01-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to reduce the level of violence in prisons.

Andrew Selous

Our prison system needs reform. There is much more to do to ensure prisons are places of decency, hope and rehabilitation.

Violence in prisons has increased in recent years. The nature of offenders currently in custody and the widespread availability of novel psychoactive substances have both contributed to making prisons less safe. There is no single, simple solution to the problems we face but we are making progress.

We have launched a two year Violence Reduction project to reduce violent incidents and the propensity of violence in prisons. This project will help us to gain a better understanding of the causes and characteristics of violence in prisons and to strengthen the handling of this. We are also trialling the use of body worn cameras in prisons, developing better case management of individuals identified as being at heightened risk of harming others, introducing a psychologically based assessment tool to understand better local factors driving violence in prisons, and training sniffer dogs to detect novel psychoactive substances. We have also made it an offence to smuggle novel psychoactive substances into prison. However, ultimately the only way to reduce violence in our prisons is to give governors and those who work in prisons the tools necessary to more effectively reform and rehabilitate offenders, which we are determined to see through.