In the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) information is only held centrally in respect of staff disciplined or dismissed from publicly managed prisons. There is no requirement for privately managed prisons to notify NOMS headquarters of any disciplinary action taken against their employees. In order to provide the information required in respect of the privately managed prisons, we would have to contact each of the prisons concerned and ask them to submit their records for the last five years to NOMS so that it could be collated. This would incur disproportionate cost.
The following table provides a breakdown of the number of prison officers in the public sector Prison Service who have been disciplined or dismissed in each of the last five calendar years. Staff can be dismissed from the public sector Prison Service if their attendance, conduct or performance falls below the required standards. The data given for dismissals includes all prison officers from publicly managed prisons who have left the service for inefficiency, conduct and performance reasons.
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total Disciplinary cases1 156 160 185 122 151 774 Dismissals2 172 167 200 185 170 894 1 Data on disciplinary cases are derived from the HR Discipline Database and the Shared Service Personnel Management Database. As with any large-scale administrative systems these are liable to a certain level of inaccuracy. It includes all centrally recorded disciplinary cases excluding those resulting in dismissal from service. 2 Data includes dismissals for inefficiency, conduct and performance reasons and are derived from the Oracle HR system and the former Personnel Corporate Database. As with any large-scale administrative systems these are liable to a certain level of inaccuracy.
In privately managed prisons the duration of initial training for prison custody officers (equivalent to prison officers in the public sector) is nine weeks. The training is mainly classroom based but includes job shadowing in the prison.
All newly recruited prison officers in public sector prisons are required to complete a one year foundation training programme, leading to a level 3 National Vocational Qualification in Custodial Care (CCNVQ). Training begins with an eight week prison officer entry level training course, which is mainly college-based. This provides staff with all the underpinning knowledge and understanding in core skills required to successfully complete their CCNVQ within 12 months of joining the National Offender Management Service.