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Prisons: Pepper Spray

Answer

PAVA is presently in 80 HMPPS prisons *, the below tables provide population figures across those 80 prisons firstly by ethnicity and secondly by religion. We are unable to provide this breakdown for disability as data is not available.

Note* The 80 prisons comprises 26 live sites which have issued to over 50% of their staff and the remainder have only issued to a small number of staff as part of an exceptional deployment.

Table 1: Prisoners held in prisons where pelargonic acid vanillylamide (PAVA) incapacitant spray has been issued, by ethnicity, March 2019 - September 2021, in England and Wales
	31-Mar-19	30-Sep-19	31-Mar-20	30-Sep-20	31-Mar-21	30-Sep-21
All	59,070	59,958	59,657	57,223	56,594	57,224
Asian / Asian British	4,599	4,642	4,635	4,464	4,534	4,709
Black / African / Caribbean / Black British	7,786	7,964	7,839	7,615	7,541	7,494
Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups	2,724	2,808	2,848	2,803	2,758	2,764
Other ethnic group	918	916	932	888	853	858
White	42,624	43,228	42,912	40,918	40,399	40,869
Not recorded	240	236	320	376	314	354
Not stated	179	164	171	159	195	176
Table 2: Prisoners held in prisons where pelargonic acid vanillylamide (PAVA) incapacitant spray has been issued, by religion, March 2019 - September 2021, in England and Wales
	31-Mar-19	30-Sep-19	31-Mar-20	30-Sep-20	31-Mar-21	30-Sep-21
All	59,070	59,958	59,657	57,223	56,594	57,224
Anglican	9,751	9,750	9,522	8,866	8,391	8,223
Free Church	505	535	547	559	539	531
Roman Catholic	10,380	10,453	10,386	9,873	9,547	9,723
Other Christian	7,741	7,828	7,584	7,302	7,350	7,570
Muslim	9,612	9,920	10,096	9,953	10,202	10,424
Hindu	263	271	271	237	247	256
Sikh	431	399	406	365	344	349
Buddhist	1,181	1,183	1,227	1,171	1,135	1,104
Jewish	363	406	406	395	384	383
Other religious groups	1,345	1,420	1,433	1,410	1,366	1,362
Other non-recognised	7	5	6	6	5	5
No religion	17,381	17,702	17,676	16,879	16,843	17,120
Not recorded	110	86	97	207	241	174

Data sources and quality
The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Source: Prison NOMIS System

PQ HL3793 (Ministry of Justice; DASD-DES)

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

HL3793

Session

2021-22

Subjects

Prisons Riot control weapons Pepper spray

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk