E.08.06 Incident Report Components

1. Types of report components

There are 3 levels of reporting of incidents, as follows:

1. Events that might comprise more than one incident category, but which are associated, and which previously would have been reported and counted as one incident. This is referred to in this document as an incident. It is recorded on one incident form.
2. One incident may have multiple categories.
3. The person count for certain incident categories, for example the number of prisoners injured in an accident, or the number of staff assaulted. It may be that two prisoners have escaped after assaulting three officers and taking one hostage. For this incident there are 3 incident categories: a breakout escape (person count = 2); hostage taking (person count = 1), and alleged prisoner assault on staff (person count = 3). It is important to record incidents in this way in order to trace trends up to and including the present. If the IOMS system is used for reporting incidents no person count needs to be entered as the system will automatically generate reports showing the number of persons involved. Person count details shown here are only for manual reports on national forms.

2. Each category to be recorded

All incident categories must be separately recorded for each incident. If they are not then, taking the above example which presumably would have been categorised as a breakout escape, there is no separate record that a hostage was taken and officers assaulted, invalidating measures of these categories.

3. Person counts to be recorded

Person counts are needed for reporting, for example, not just how many instances were of injury-causing accidents to prisoners, but how many prisoners were injured as a result of accidents.