Tasers were deployed five times but were never fired during the first nine months of a trial of their use in prisons, BBC South East has reported.
The five incidents were said to have taken place between July 2025 and April 2026 at four prisons across England: HMP’s Lewes, High Down, Bullingdon and Featherstone. According to the BBC report, the weapons were drawn from officers’ holsters “on a number of occasions”, and at two jails officers went as far as aiming the red dot of light at a prisoner, to serve as a warning.
In the limited trial, only 20 specialist staff from the Operational Response and Resilience Unit (ORRU) – a national team under HM Prison and Probation Service which handles high-risk incidents – have had access to Tasers for use in complex incidents such as hostage situations and barricades.
The Government has said it is experimenting with Tasers in prisons in England and Wales as part of a £15 million investment in protective equipment, which also includes increasing provision of body armour for staff. It has said the electric stun-guns will be rolled out to 500 prison officers to reduce violence.
Tom Wheatley, President of the Prison Governors’ Association, commented “in the future, it is likely that we’ll see staff routinely deployed in some prisons with access to Tasers, which would enable them to react to the most serious incidents quickly, and hopefully bring them to a safe conclusion without anybody getting hurt”.
Andrew Neilson, Director of Campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, has, however, warned that the move could escalate tensions in prisons:
“The answer is not more weapons. It is ensuring that prisons offer stable and productive regimes that get people out of their cells and into purposeful activities, and doing more to address the overcrowding that has put jails under intolerable pressure.”
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