Information from incidents which have been categorised as ‘Prisoner on Officer’ and ‘Prisoner on Other’ is provided in the following table.
This may be over-inclusive and contain some assaults on visitors and official visitors. The information is restricted to YOI institutions—it does not include assault data from mixed function establishments—and therefore precludes data from establishments also holding older prisoners as well as all female assault incidents.
Reasonably reliable data for 1997-99 are not centrally available and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Number 2000 480 2001 539 2002 555 2003 507 2004 709 2005 801 2006 776 12007 280 1 Up to 31 May 2007 Notes: 1. The numbers of assaults reported here are derived from the Prison Service Incident Reporting System (IRS). This system processes high volumes of data supplied by prisons and is constantly being updated. The numbers indicated here provide a useful indication of the realistic scale of assaults incidents, many of which are relatively minor. The numbers should not be interpreted as absolute. 2. The increase in reported numbers of assaults reflects, in part, the increase in prison population. 3. There is a slight lag in reporting which means that the provisional number mentioned here will rise a little in the coming months. 4. Numbers need to be interpreted with caution as some assault incidents may involve more than one assaulter or more than one victim, e.g. one or more prisoners and a member of staff. The numbers refer to the number of incidents not the number of prisoners and others involved.