§ Mr. KirkwoodTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people currently in United Kingdom prisons have served a previous prison sentence for a different offence; and if he will make a statement. [21276]
§ Miss WiddecombeResponsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Archy Kirkwood, dated 20 March 1997:
The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question asking how many people currently in United Kingdom prisons have served a previous prison sentence for a different offence.The information requested on current prisoners is not available centrally. The most recent. readily available, information relates to a sample of sentenced prisons in England and Wales at 30 June 1993.It is estimated that 48 per cent of this sample had served a prison sentence for a previous "standard list" offence (this includes all indictable offences and some of the more serious summary offences). This figure is based on matching information on prisoners in the sample to records on the Home Office Offenders Index. Further details of the sample and the matching process are given on pages 607 of "Prison Statistics, England and Wales, 1993" (Cm 2893), a copy of which is in the Library.