§ Mr. George HowarthTo ask the of State for the Home Department if he will list (i) the latest available figures, (ii) the figures for 1992, (iii) those for 1988 and (iv) those for 1987 for the average percentage of prisoners who exceed minimum visiting entitlements for each category C prison. [38750]
§ Miss WiddecombeResponsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for reply to be given.
Letter from A. J. Pearson to Mr. George Howarth, dated 22 July 1996
The Home Secretary has asked me. in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the average percentage of prisoners who exceed the minimum visiting entitlement for each category C prison.The information is not collected in the form requested. The Prison Service had however a key performance indicator (KPI) which measured the proportion of prisoners held in establishments which gave all prisoners the opportunity to exceed the minimum visiting entitlement, subject to qualifying for this under the earned incentives scheme.Last year the Prison Service succeeded in meeting this target in every establishment, for the second year running. In view of this achievement, Ministers agreed that this KPI should be dropped and replaced by other more challenging ones.Performance on this KPI since the beginning of agency status is shown in the attached table.57W
Prison service key performance indicator—minimum visiting entitlement, 1992–1996 Performance of population with opportunity to exceed the minimum visiting entitlement 1992–93 84 1993–94 99 1994–95 100 1995–96 100