Drugs and violence drop during prisons pilot in UK

[ahlam1399]

LONDON: Assaults and drug use have dropped across 10 English prisons involved in a pilot scheme launched last year to tackle violence in troubled jails.Positive drug tests fell by roughly half between August, when the £10 million scheme was launched, and March this year, according to figures released by the Ministry of Justice. The rate of assaults dropped by almost 16 per cent from the three months up to August last year to the latest quarter up to June, the data shows.However, analysis by the charity Inquest suggests deaths increased across the prisons involved in the project, while Labour criticised the pilot, pointing out that only seven of the 10 jails saw a fall in assaults. Measures including new scanners, sniffer dogs and repairs to basic infrastructure were introduced under the pilot at Hull, Humber, Leeds, Lindholme, Moorland, Wealstun, Nottingham, Ranby, Isis and Wormwood Scrubs prisons.Ministry of Justice (MoJ) officials said “tangible results” were expected within 12 months, and then prisons minister Rory Stewart vowed to resign if the campaign failed. He was promoted to international development secretary before moving to the back benches. The MoJ said the project will end but will form “part of our continuing efforts to boost safety, security and decency in all prisons”.The figures suggest the rate of positive drug tests across the 10 prisons roughly halved from 26.5 per cent in August last year to 13.4 per cent in March, although the MoJ report pointed out the number of prisoners sampled was relatively small.The rate of recorded assaults per 1,000 prisoners across the 10 jails fell from 42.9 in the three months to August last year to 36.1 in the quarter to June - a decrease of around 16 per cent, compared with a drop of roughly 8 per cent across all prisons in England and Wales.Two of the prisons involved in the pilot - Nottingham and Wormwood Scrubs - saw more assaults, while the rate at Hull remained roughly the same.Charlotte Pickles, director of the Reform think tank, described the results as “very encouraging”, but said the findings must now inform how the promised £100 million investment should be spent.Figures released last month by the MoJ showed assaults in prisons across England and Wales hit a new high of 34,425 in the 12 months to March, up 11 per cent from the previous year, and a rate of 415 incidents per 1,000 prisoners.Data compiled by Inquest found there were 34 deaths across the 10 prisons involved in the pilot in the 12 months before the project was launched, while the charity’s analysis of MoJ figures found 41 deaths in the 11 months since the start of the scheme.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/com/cwEr/~4/vViEnoTmrBA

أكثر... (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/com/cwEr/~3/vViEnoTmrBA/516116-drugs-and-violence-drop-during-prisons-pilot-in-uk)