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Written question asked by Rudi Vis (Labour) on Tuesday, 22 April 2008, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 24 April 2008. It was answered by Maria Eagle (Labour) on Tuesday, 29 April 2008 on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.


Prisoners: Females

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many incidents of self-mutilation by women were recorded in each prison in the last five years.
Answer

The Prison Service does not use the term 'self-mutilation'.The following table includes all incidents of self-harm by girls and women in any prisons that held them in the period in question. It should be noted that the numbers refer to incidents not people (a number of individuals self-harm on more than one occasion and account for a disproportionate ,number of incidents), and do not reflect the severity of incidents, i.e. include all incidents no matter how minor the self-harm as well as noose/ligature making (even where no injury occurred).

Self-harm incidents¹
Prison 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Askham Grange 1 0 2 1 0
Brockhill 674 475 278 252 ²—
Bronzefield ³— 274 831 1,165 1,736
Buckley Hall 765 1,082 597 ²— ²—
Bullwood Hall 659 1,065 1,584 305 2
Cookham Wood 158 163 197 144 216
Downview 185 71 362 282 255
Drake Hall 18 23 44 22 56
Durham 317 241 56 ³— ³—
East Sutton Park 0 0 0 0 1
Eastwood Park 789 1,163 2,597 2,147 1992
Edmunds Hill 156 207 ²— ²— ²—
Foston Hall 185 614 774 614 1,166
Holloway 958 1,184 1,402 1,475 1,104
Low Newton 381 800 1,129 746 984
Morton Hall 63 50 49 81 60
New Hall 1,689 1,125 1,065 1,266 1,191
Peterborough ³— ³— 823 1,129 888
Send 78 78 97 200 155
Styal 376 1,061 1,416 1,581 1,312
Winchester 38 14 ²— ²— ²—
¹ The numbers of self harm incidents reported here are based on information supplied by prisons through the Prison Service Incident Reporting System (IRS). Self-harm is a high volume incident and is subject to technical and recording problems. Nevertheless, the system provides a sensible indication of the scale of self-harm but the numbers should not be treated as absolute. These figures may differ from previously published figures as some incidents are retrospectively added to IRS.
² Prison re-rolled from female to male.
³ Prison was not open yet.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
475 c391-2W; 201713
Session
2007-08
Subjects
Women Prisoners Self-harm
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk