HC Deb 06 May 1998 vol 311 cc412-3W
Mr. William Ross

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many persons are in prison for crimes related to terrorist actions; how many belong to each proscribed organisation; how many claiming allegiance to, or accepted by, each such organisation are due for release in the normal course of events in(a) 1998, (b) 1999, (c) 2000, (d) 2001, (e) 2002 and (f) in the following five year period; and how many in each category are serving life or other indeterminate sentences. [39966]

Mr. Ingram

The Prison Service does not record whether a person is in prison for crimes related to terrorist actions. The Prison Service records the number of prisoners convicted of scheduled offences, which are those offences generally committed as acts of terrorism. On 26 February 1998 there were 781 prisoners in custody who had been convicted of scheduled offences. This figure includes prisoners who have had their offence certified out by the Attorney-General as having no connection with terrorism. Only prisoners held in segregated wings at HMP Maze and a small number of female prisoners held at HMP Maghaberry can clearly be identified as being affiliated to particular proscribed organisations. In the normal course of events the following number of prisoners affiliated to these organisations would be released.

UDA/UFF UVF LVF IRA INLA
1998 8 10 0 28 1
1999 21 9 1 25 2
2000 16 7 1 18 1
2001 4 8 3 18 2
2002 7 1 2 15 0
Next 5 Years 2 3 0 34 4

Note:

The figures in this table relate to those persons convicted of scheduled offences and sentenced to three years or more who were in custody in HMP Maze on 26 January 1998. The complete record was not available for a small number of prisoners when the research on which this table is based was carried out and so the table slightly undercounts the number of prisoners to be released during this period.

The number of prisoners serving sentences of life imprisonment for scheduled offences at HMP Maze on 1 May 1998 by paramilitary affiliation is as follows:

Number
UDA/UFF 21
UVF 21
LVF 5
IRA 48
INLA 4

These figures exclude life sentence prisoners who have been given provisional release dates.