Dear Ms Bickley

SUBJECT: Freedom of Information Request

Thank you for your email of 23 November 2009, in which you asked the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to provide the following information:

Number of serving prison officers working in the South East, South West and Wales regions, who have been disciplined following receipt of criminal convictions for:

1) Fraud and deception related offences,

2) Violent offences including assault,

3) Drug related offences,

4) Sexual offences,

5) Racial, religious or homophobic offences,

6) Theft,

7) Other.

Your request has been passed to me because I have responsibility for answering requests which relate to staff conduct and discipline matters within the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and has been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

The following table gives breakdown that you have requested. The information contained within the table below has been extracted from the central discipline databases which are subject to the normal inaccuracies associated with any large scale reporting system and there may be additional cases which have yet to be reported to NOMS headquarters. The information covers the period 1 October 2006 through 30 September 2009 and only includes cases involving officers employed within the South East, South West and Wales geographical areas.

Table: Prison Officers¹ disciplined² for receipt of criminal convictions/police cautions

(Centrally held information for South East, South West and Wales areas only)

¹ This includes staff in the Officer, Senior Officer and Principle Officer grades.

² Penalties include oral, written and final written warnings, removal from the field of promotion, downgrading or a combination of the aforementioned awards. Cases resulting in dismissal from the Service have been excluded from this information.

As you are aware, we refused a request for information from yourself dated 30 September 2009 (our reference FOI 61461) because it was too costly to answer. You have subsequently submitted a further two refined requests for information on 24 October (our reference FOI 61838) and 23 November (our reference FOI 62294). The time taken to locate, extract and analyse the centrally held data to these two refined requests falls just short of the 3.5 working day cost limit.

You should also be aware that if you submit a series of similar or related requests, these can be aggregated and we may decline to answer if the aggregated cost of complying exceeds the cost limit of £600, as permitted by the The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

As part of our obligations under the FOIA, the Ministry of Justice has an independent review process. If you are dissatisfied with this decision, you may write to request an internal review. The internal review will be carried out by someone who did not make the original decision, and they will re-assess how the Department handled the original request.

If you wish to request an internal review, please write or send an email to the Data Access and Compliance Unit within two months of the date of this letter, at the following address:

Data Access and Compliance Unit

Information Directorate

Ministry of Justice

6^th Floor, Zone B

Postal Point 6.25

102 Petty France

London

SW1H 9AJ

e-mail: [email address]

If you remain dissatisfied after an internal review decision, you have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner's Office under Section 50 of the FOIA. You can contact the Information Commissioner's Office at the following address:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Internet: https://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/contact_us.aspx

Yours sincerely

Tracy Phelan

NOMS HR Directorate

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