DEATHS, self-harm and violence have risen in England and Wales’s prisons over the past year, data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) revealed today.

The statistics showed that prisons recorded more than 55,000 self-harm incidents in the 12 months to December 2022 – 3 per cent higher than the previous year.

Incidents by women accounted for 29 per cent of all occasions despite their making up just 4 per cent of the population.

While the figure decreased overall for men, self-harm in women’s prisons rose by 37 per cent.

The figures amount to a rate of one incident every 9.5 minutes for all prisons.

The number of assault incidents rose by 7 per cent to nearly 30,000 – one every 25 minutes.

More than 322 people died in custody in the year to March 2023, according to the data, an increase of 12 per cent.

These included 82 people whose deaths were recorded as “self-inflicted,” up from 79 during the previous 12 months.

Howard League for Penal Reform chief executive Andrea Coomber called the rise of self-harm in women’s prisons “truly alarming.”

She said: “Although the number of assaults recorded is not yet as high as we saw before the pandemic, it appears to be rising fast.

“With jails now so crowded that people are being held in police cells, clearly the system is becoming less and less safe.

“The government must respond urgently and it should begin by ending its plan to expand the prison population.

“It makes no sense to be building more jails when there are not enough staff to safely run the ones we already have.”

The MoJ was approached for comment.