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The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the average time served by inmates sentenced for murder and who have since been released.
I attached a copy of a table showing the numbers of life sentence prisoners released from 1981–1991. This information is published annually in "Prison Statistics, England and Wales" (Table 8.5 of the latest volume, for 1991, Cm 2157), a copy of which is in the House of Commons Library.