Mental health toll ‘robs jail and probation staff of 282,000 days’

PRISON and probation staff took the equivalent of more than 770 years of mental health sick leave last year, amid a crisis in the criminal justice system, data has revealed.

Some 282,457 working days were lost to mental ill health in HM Prison and Probation Service in the year to March 2024.

This is equivalent to 774 years, according analysis by the Labour Party, which also warned the number of sick days among prison and probation workers had increased by 148 per cent since 2018.

The revelations “are damning and point to a workforce on the brink”, Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary, said.

More than 40 per cent of all the sick days logged are now a result of mental ill health, according to prison and probation workforce data.

While the overall number of sick days has decreased from approximately 753,000 in the year to March 2023 to 712,000 over the last year, the number of mental ill health sick days has grown year on year.

The total stood at 113,820 in 2018, had more than doubled by 2022 to 228,276, and now stands at a record high.

While the service says the average number of sick days is 11, it pointed to sickness rates within Young Offender Institutions as being particularly higher than average.

Staff at YOI Werrington took an average18 days of sick leave last year, while staff at YOI Feltham took 17.6.

Other prisons with particularly unwell staff were HMP Liverpool, where staff took 19 days off on average, HMP Wandsworth with 16.6 days and HMP Wymott, at 16.1 days on average.

Prison violence has been on the rise in recent years, with assaults on staff increasing across the near-full estate.

A crack prison riot squad, the National Tactical Response Group, has meanwhile seen more frequent deployment in 2023 than the previous year.

And the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, has warned dangerous criminals have been freed from jail early as part of the Government’s early-release scheme.

The prison officers’ union has now warned it could take the Government to court if the overcrowding crisis in jails gets worse.

The Prison Officers’ Association fears jails, which are near capacity, could be full by June and said it may launch a legal challenge under health and safety laws if safe capacity levels are breached because guards have no “right to strike” in

England and Wales. Shadow justice secretary Ms Mahmood said Labour would “get a grip of the prison and probation service” and said: “Our hard-working prison and probation staff have been driven into the ground by 14 years of Conservative mismanagement.”

She claimed prisons had become “drug-addled, rat-infested colleges of crime which march to a drumbeat of violence and misery” under the Conservatives.

The Ministry of Justice said the prisons and probation service offered mental-health support if needed to all staff and provided fast-track referrals for trauma cases and addressed mental ill-health referrals.