A prisoner in England and Wales took their own life approximately every five days within the last year, according to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s annual report published this month.
The watchdog opened 84 investigations into self-inflicted deaths during 2025-26, alongside 235 deaths from natural causes.
The report said 11% of prisoners who took their own lives did so within the first 48 hours of entering the prison system through a reception prison.
The PPO received 5,226 complaints, including 5,022 from prisoners. Property remained the most common subject, accounting for 34% of completed complaint investigations, with more than half upheld.
Drug-related deaths accounted for 13% of prison deaths investigated, while the ombudsman warned that increasingly sophisticated drone technology was bringing unknown chemical compounds with unpredictable effects into prisons.
Ombudsman Adrian Usher called for an independent body to scrutinise prison staff conduct, arguing that investigations and disciplinary hearings currently take place within the same institution where the staff member works. He said this created a ‘stark and obvious difference’ between the consequences faced by police and prison officers investigated for similar conduct.
Andrea Coomber KC, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the figures reflected the ‘dire conditions and human misery’ in a prison system asked ‘to do too much, with too little, for too long’.
She said the findings should ‘jolt a new government’ into easing pressure on prisons and protecting those held inside from harm.
The PPO also opened investigations into eight deaths of prisoners classified as homicides, a 60% increase on the previous year, and a review into the restraint of pregnant prisoners during hospital visits. Both inquiries are continuing.
