HL Deb 06 May 1982 vol 429 c1344WA
Baroness Wootton of Abinger

asked Her Majesty's Government:

How it is possible for five persons to be serving life sentences for "offences not known" as shown on page 17 of the 1980 Prison Statistics for England and Wales, Table 1(i).

Lord Elton

These five persons were received into custody on warrants which did not contain details of their offences. Under the computer procedure, this resulted in the information about them being recorded without information about their offences on the prison index population file created for 30th June 1980. Information recorded on other computer files shows that three of these persons were sentenced for homicide and two for arson. We have since changed our computer procedure to reduce the number of occasions on which such information is not shown in the published statistics.