Attacks on prison staff in England and Wales hit 21-year high

The number of incidents in the 12 months to June in England and Wales shot up 30% to 10,281, compared with 7,907 a year earlier.

This is the highest level in any 12-month period on record since 2003, PA news agency analysis of Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures published on Thursday shows.

Campaigners branded the figures “shocking” as the prisons minister warned the rising violence behind bars against “hardworking staff” had reached “endemic levels” and illustrated the scale of the “crisis” in jails inherited by the Government.

The union representing prison officers said its members were “fed up with being used as punchbags”.

It comes as separate figures show more than 13,000 prisoners in England and Wales were freed early under the previous Conservative government and the move is likely to have contributed to a sharp rise in the number of criminals being recalled to custody for reoffending or breaching the conditions of their release.

In the latest year, nearly 1,000 of the attacks on staff were classed as “serious”, which includes incidents needing medical treatment or a trip to hospital, or injuries such as fractures, burns, extensive bruising, black eyes, broken noses and teeth, cuts, bites, temporary or permanent blindness and sexual assault.

The rate of serious assaults on staff rose year-on-year by 24% to 11 per 1,000 prisoners (974, up from 746).

The number of attacks among inmates also rose by 21% from 15,917 to 19,285. The rate of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in the latest 12-month period, 221 per 1,000 prisoners, was also up 15%.

Self-harm incidents in jails also hit a 20-year record high, reaching the highest level in any 12-month period since 2004, after 76,365 took place in the latest year. This is up 19% on the same period in the 12 months to June 2023, when 64,380 such incidents were recorded.

The number of inmates self-harming increased by 16% to 13,605 in the 12 months to June, up from 11,764 – another record high – while the rate of incidents per person rose slightly from 5.5 to 5.6.

Union the Prison Officers’ Association said levels of violence and self-harm were “unacceptable”. The figures showed staff were “working in one of the most dangerous environments in modern society” and “outline the failures of HMPPS (HM Prison and Probation Service) to protect prisoners and staff”.

Prison officers are banned by law from taking industrial action but the union added: “If HMPPS do not take steps to reduce this spiralling violence, the POA certainly will.”

The Prison Governors’ Association described the levels of violence as “indicative of the current crisis in our prisons”, adding: “Prisons must be safe places to live and work if they are to serve their primary purposes to punish offenders, protect the public and to be places of rehabilitation.

“We are failing in this respect and without focus and investment from Government will continue to do so.”

Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “These shocking figures underline the very human consequences of the severe pressures the prison system is under.”

Prisons minister Lord Timpson, said the figures “yet again illustrate the scale of the prison crisis this Government inherited and how prisons are failing their basic function to cut crime”.

“Attacks on our hardworking staff have reached endemic levels and the rate of self-harm has peaked at a depressing high – both indications of the system’s failure to rehabilitate.

“This new Government has already taken urgent action to save the prison system from the point of collapse and we will now make the reforms necessary so that prisons are safer and make better citizens, not better criminals”, he added.

The MoJ report said the “substantial” prison population should be taken into account when considering the number of incidents. Data shows there were 87,726 prisoners behind bars in England and Wales at the end of June.