Nearly 1,000 rapes were reported to have taken place in prisons since 2010, exclusive data obtained by the Observer from police forces in England and Wales can reveal.
A further 2,336 sexual assaults were reported to police in the same period, and experts warned that the true figure for both crimes may be far higher because not all attacks would be reported.
In response to the Observer’s findings, Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said there has been “minimal research – and a worrying lack of coherent and consistently applied policies – in relation to consensual and coercive sex behind bars”.
The investigation comes amid growing concern about the safety of prisons, both for those who are incarcerated and for prison staff. Prisons face continuing issues with overcrowding, staff reductions and budget cuts, fuelled by more than a decade of austerity measures from successive Conservative-led governments.
The impact of austerity has left English prisons “unable to provide safe environments for rising prison populations”, according to research by Nasrul Ismail, a lecturer in criminology at Bristol University.
As of September 2022, just over half (52%) of prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded, said a government report.
The government last year announced a £500m funding injection to create thousands of new prison places for men and women. There are just under 90,000 people in prison in the UK.
At the same time, prisons are struggling to recruit and retain staff. The government has launched an inquiry into staffing problems in the prison system after the number of prison officers and custodial managers fell by 600 in 2021-22.
Losing staff puts safety at risk. Neilson said that the Howard League had called for staff to be given more training and guidance, “but we know that many experienced officers have since left the workforce and prisons have struggled to recruit and retain people to replace them”.
The figures obtained by the Observer saw a notable increase in reported rapes and sexual assaults in the years after 2016, correlating with the period when austerity began to bite. Cuts to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) budgets totalled £2.4bn by 2015-16, according to contemporary analysis by the Prison Reform Trust.
Durham constabulary received three reports of sexual assault in 2010 – this increased elevenfold to 33 in 2018. Humberside police saw reports of sexual violence double from five to 10 between 2015 and 2018. Cumbria police recorded a similar rise: the number of reported sexual assaults jumped from one in 2014 to eight in 2016. The increase in reports also correlates with eruptions of prison violence, including the 2016 Birmingham prison riot, which involved more than 500 .
Other forces saw a rise in reported rapes and sexual assaults during 2020 and 2021, when the country was coping with the coronavirus pandemic. Greater Manchester police received 18 reports of rape in 2020, and Wiltshire police received reports of four rapes in 2022 and three in 2020 – after receiving only three in the previous seven years combined.
While this investigation has used police reports to measure sexual violence in prisons, other data sources demonstrate that violence and assault rates across the prison estate remain high. The most recent safety in custody statistics published by the MoJ recorded 20,993 assaults in the 12 months to December 2022, of which 12% were considered “serious assaults”. These include sexual violence. The number of serious assaults saw an increase of 19% from the previous year. There were 195 prisoner-on-prisoner sexual assaults recorded in custody, 26% lower than the 265 recorded in 2019.
Sexual violence is an issue across the male and female prison estate. Speaking in 2020, Lord Keen told the House of Lords there had been 122 sexual assaults in women’s prisons over the previous decade.
The MoJ confirmed that the number of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, including sexual ones, has fallen by more than a quarter since the year before the pandemic.
A Prison Service spokesperson said: “We take allegations of sexual assault extremely seriously and refer all incidents to the police for investigation. Our £125m investment in security measures is making prisons safer, while we have also introduced round-the-clock prisoner helplines and body-worn cameras for all frontline staff.”
