Violence involving prisoners

Published 14 June 2021

Last updated 8 August 2023 - see all updates

Contents

1. Navigate toMain facts and figures section
2. Navigate toThings you need to know section
3. Navigate to By ethnicity over time (assailants only) section
4. Navigate toData sources section
5. Navigate toDownload the data section

1. Main facts and figures

there were 21,489 recorded assaults in public prisons in England and Wales in 2020, compared with 32,800 in 2019 – a 34% decrease
between 2012 and 2020, the rate of assaults per 1,000 prisoners almost doubled in the Asian, black and mixed ethnic groups – it more than doubled in the white and other ethnic groups
prisoners in the mixed ethnic group were more likely than any other ethnic group to be victims of assault
Black prisoners were most likely out of all ethnic groups to be assailants (319 incidents for every 1,000 prisoners) or involved in incidents with no clear victim or assailant (185 incidents for every 1,000 prisoners)
Black prisoners were the second most likely ethnic group to be victims (116 incidents for every 1,000 prisoners)

2. Things you need to know

What the data measures

The data measures the number of violent incidents involving prisoners in public prisons in England and Wales. It also shows the rate of incidents for every 1,000 prisoners in each ethnic group.

Violent incidents are where a prisoner:

assaults another prisoner or a member of prison staff (‘assailants’)
is assaulted by another prisoner (‘victims’)
is involved in an incident where there is no clear assailant or victim (‘fighters’)

Rates for every 1,000 prisoners are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Not included in the data

The data is based on the number of violent incidents. It does not include information about:

the number of people involved
any staff or visitors who may have been victims or otherwise involved

How violent incident rates are calculated

The rate shown for each ethnic group is the average number of violent incidents each year for every 1,000 prisoners of that ethnic group.

The ethnic groups used in the data

Data is shown for 5 aggregated ethnic groups:

Asian
Black
Mixed
White
Other

This means estimates are shown for these groups as a whole.

Prisoners reported their own ethnicity. About 95% of prisoners reported their ethnicity for each year of the period studied.

Methodology

Read the detailed methodology document (PDF opens in a new window or tab) for the data on this page.

Some prisoners may be involved in more than one violent incident, in which case they will be included in the data more than once and the number of prisoners involved does not equal the total number of assaults.

There are more White prisoners compared with other ethnic groups. You can read more about how group size affects the reliability of data.

In the data file

See Download the data for rates by;

estimates by involvement type
data is rounded to 1 decimal place.

3. By ethnicity over time (assailants only)

Location:: England and Wales
Time period:: 2012 to 2020
Source:: Safety in custody quarterly: update to December 2020

Assaults for every 1,000 prisoners, and number of assaults, by ethnicity over time
Time	Asian Assaults per 1,000 prisoners	Asian Number	Black Assaults per 1,000 prisoners	Black Number	Mixed Assaults per 1,000 prisoners	Mixed Number	White Assaults per 1,000 prisoners	White Number	Other Assaults per 1,000 prisoners	Other Number	Unknown Assaults per 1,000 prisoners	Unknown Number
	Asian		Black		Mixed		White		Other		Unknown
2012	71	454	180	2,009	182	579	72	4,458	95	94	N/A^*	211
2013	96	619	188	2,031	217	703	78	4,787	111	111	N/A^*	145
2014	89	592	217	2,325	262	905	95	5,914	120	123	N/A^*	80
2015	118	810	285	3,017	336	1,177	127	8,026	163	160	N/A^*	60
2016	150	1,032	338	3,549	405	1,465	167	10,442	221	225	N/A^*	69
2017	167	1,157	379	4,051	433	1,624	179	11,196	269	293	N/A^*	75
2018	200	1,333	433	4,505	479	1,787	218	13,159	241	290	N/A^*	194
2019	185	1,226	438	4,633	452	1,755	207	12,449	290	374	N/A^*	452
2020	129	816	319	3,284	317	1,237	145	8,380	203	241	N/A^*	224

Download table data for ‘By ethnicity over time (assailants only)’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity over time (assailants only)’ (CSV)

4. Data sources

Source

Safety in custody quarterly: update to December 2020

Type of data

Administrative data

Type of statistic

Official statistics

Publisher

Ministry of Justice

Publication frequency

Yearly

Purpose of data source

This data is used by the government to:

inform policy development
monitor the impact of changes over time
model future changes and their impact on the prison system

5. Download the data

Violence involving prisoners data - Spreadsheet (csv) 31 KB

This file contains the following: measure, ethnicity, year, type of involvement, rate per 1,000, number

Publication release date: 14 June 2021

Updated: 8 August 2023

full page history

8 August 2023 Page has been restructured
14 June 2021 The previous version of this page should not be used because prisoners from the Chinese ethnic group were incorrectly included in the Other ethnic group instead of the aggregated Asian ethnic group. This has been corrected, and the data for 2019 and 2020 has been updated.