United Kingdom: Minister of Justice launches inquiry after record number of prison suicides in 2016

The Ministry of Justice has launched an internal inquiry into the mental health backgrounds of prisoners who killed themselves, as new figures are expected to reveal that 2016 was a record high for self-inflicted deaths across prisons in England and Wales.

The justice secretary, Elizabeth Truss, has also ordered more prison staff to be trained as part of the specialist Tornado anti-riot squads after eight serious disturbances and riots broke out in the prison system in the last three months.

The latest quarterly “safety in custody” statistics are expected to confirm the increasingly volatile state of prisons in England and Wales. Self-inflicted deaths are expected to have risen to 113 in 2016, while incidents of self-harm have increased by more than 25%.

If confirmed, the final figure of 113 self-inflicted deaths in 2016 will compare with 89 in 2015 and the previous record high of 96 in 2004.

One key indicator of prison violence – assaults on staff and other inmates – is thought to have risen by more than 33% to an average of 65 a day across the prison system.

Official figures obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the number of incidents requiring the specialist Tornado riot squads to regain control of a prison tripled between 2013 and 2015.

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