Prisoners: Self-harm and Suicide

The Government takes very seriously its responsibility to keep prisoners safe, and we are committed to reducing the number of self-inflicted deaths and the incidence of self-harm across the estate. This is why we have established a prison safety programme through which we are taking forward a comprehensive set of actions to improve safety in custody. They include:

• investing in over 4,300 additional staff in order to deliver consistent, purposeful regimes;
• improving staff knowledge and understanding of the factors known to increase risk of self-harm, to help them to identify and respond appropriately to prisoners at risk. Our revised introduction to suicide and self-harm prevention training has already reached over 24,000 staff;
• improving the flow, quality and use of risk information about people coming into our prisons, to support effective decision-making about risk;
• producing an early days toolkit to help staff enhance the support that they provide for prisoners during the first few days and weeks in custody;
• renewing our partnership with Samaritans by confirming a further three years’ funding for their valuable Listeners Scheme, and working with them to share learning from the ‘Coping with Life in Prisons’ project, a successful pilot initiative in which Samaritans-trained ex-prisoners delivered emotional resilience training to groups of newly-arrived prisoners; and
• improving the multi-disciplinary ACCT case management process for those identified as at risk of self-harm or suicide.