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Crime Reduction Initiatives
Mr. Andrew Turner: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of the population in each police authority's area benefit from each of his crime reduction initiatives which has not been subject to national roll-out. [71890]
Mr. John Denham [holding answer 22 July 2002]: It is not possible to estimate, with accuracy the proportion of any specific population that will benefit from many crime reduction initiatives, but the population as a whole will have benefited from the reduction in crime achieved since 1997.
Asylum Removal
Mr. Pickthall: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what lessons have been learned by his Department from the Yarl's Wood fire incident; and how those have been incorporated into the site search and assessment criteria for asylum removals centres. [70944]
Beverley Hughes [holding answer 22 July 2002]: We await the recommendations of the Home Office inquiry into the incident, which will also take into account those of the Bedfordshire County Council, the Bedfordshire Police and the Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service.
Double Jeopardy
Mr. Wiggin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which crimes will be affected by the new double jeopardy proposal. [72446]
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Mr. Hilary Benn: The proposal contained in the White Paper, Justice for All, published on 17 July 2002 would allow the Court of Appeal to quash an acquittal only where there is compelling new evidence of an acquitted defendant's guilt, and following the approval of the Director of Public Prosecutions for that defendant to be re-investigated and for an application subsequently to be submitted to the Court of Appeal.
This would apply to a limited range of very serious offences such as murder, rape, manslaughter and armed robbery. We will publish our detailed legislative proposals in due course.
Remanded Children
Mr. McNamara: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many children remanded to prison were subsequently (a) found not guilty by the courts and (b) not given a custodial sentence, broken down by age, in each year since 1995. [72049]
Mr. Hilary Benn [holding answer 23 July 2002]: Information on remands is collected centrally for the Home Office, but it is not possible to reliably disaggregate the data by age to this level.
Heroin
John Mann: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what method his Department uses to estimate the level of availability of heroin on the streets. [71397]
Mr. Bob Ainsworth: Heroin availability can be defined and measured in a variety of ways. The clandestine nature of drugs supply and consumption also mean that definitive figures on heroin availability are not possible. However, the Home Office has produced figures on the size of the United Kingdom (UK) heroin market.
The method for producing these figures draws on general population surveys, and on the urine testing and surveying of arrestees in police custody. These allow estimates to be produced on the total number of regular heroin users, frequency of heroin consumption and level of consumption. A figure can then be calculated for total amount of heroin consumed and therefore an overall estimate for the value of the UK heroin market.
A more detailed outline of the above method and the estimates produced can be found in "Sizing the UK Market for Illicit Drugs" (Home Office Research Development Statistics Occasional Paper No 74. 2001). A copy of this report has been placed in the Library and is available on www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/index.html.
John Mann: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of heroin-using offenders in (a) England, (b) Nottinghamshire and (c) Bassetlaw re-offended in the last 12 months. [71395]
Mr. Bob Ainsworth: Information on the proportion of heroin-using offenders re-offending is not held at the detailed level requested.
Numbers of prisoners in England and Wales re-convicted, by offence for which originally convicted and offence on first reconviction, within two years of discharge from prison in 1997 are contained in Table 9.8 of "Prison statistics England and Wales 2000".
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Details of level of illegal income by type of drug, and self reported crime by type of drug are reported in Chapters 7 and 8 of Home Office Research Study 205 "Drugs and crime: The results of the second developmental stage of the New England and Wales Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme". This study reports outcomes from pilot sites (including Nottingham) participating in the NEW-ADAM Programme.
Copies of these documents are available in the Library.
Child Prison Suicides
Mr. McNamara: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many child suicides in prisons there were, broken down by (a) age and (b) prison in each year since 1990. [72050]
Mr. Hilary Benn [holding answer 23 July 2002]: The available information is set out in the tables. The number of self-inflicted deaths of young prisoners from 1990 to 2002 (to 17 July 2002) are shown in Table 1.
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| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 7 |
| 1991 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 1992 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 1993 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 1994 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| 1995 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 1996 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 5 |
| 1997 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| 1998 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 |
| 1999 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| 2000 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| 2001 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| 2002 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1 | 8 | 13 | 33 | 55 |
* Up to and including 17 July 2002
The Prison Service employs the term "self-inflicted death" (which includes all those deaths where it appears that the person may have acted specifically to take his/her own life) rather than suicide.
Table 2 shows the overall number of self-inflicted deaths of young prisoners in establishments during each of the last 13 years.
| Establishment | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | Totals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Altcourse | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Aylesbury | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Brinsford | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Brixton | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Cardiff | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Deerbolt | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Doncaster | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Exeter | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Feltham | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| Glen Parva | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Gloucester | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Hindley | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 |
| Leeds | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Lewes | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Low Newton | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Moorland | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Parc | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Portland | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Reading | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Stoke Heath | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Swansea | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Swinfen Hall | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Wetherby | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Totals | 7 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 55 |
*Up to and including 17 July 2002.
Children in Care (Offenders)
Simon Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of (a) registered young offenders, (b) registered offenders, (c) young offenders resident in youth offender institutions, (d) offenders resident in adult prisons, (e) persons convicted of drug-related offences and (f) persons convicted of violent crimes are known to have a history of being in care. [72929]
Mr. Hilary Benn: No data are held centrally on the upbringing of persons in prisons in England and Wales. This means that it is not possible to provide specific answers to questions (a) to (f). However, according to the Criminality Survey 2000, 31 per cent. of the sentenced male prison population (excluding sex offenders) had been taken into local authority care as a child.
In 1997, a survey was carried out by the Office for National Statistics, called "Psychiatric Morbidity Among Prisoners in England and Wales". A sample of around 1,200 male remand, 1,200 male sentenced and 800 female prisoners were interviewed. 33 per cent. of the males on remand and 26 per cent. of the males under sentence had been taken into local authority care as a child. 29 per cent.
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of the females on remand and 25 per cent. of the females under sentence had also been taken into local authority care as a child.
According to the National Prison Survey 1991, when interviews were conducted with around 4,000 sentenced and remand prisoners (juveniles and immigration detainees were excluded): "26 per cent. said that they had at some point before the age of 16 been taken into local authority care. As many as 38 per cent. of prisoners under 21 reported that they had had such an experience".
Simon Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which statutory body has responsibility for the welfare of children in care who have been committed to a young offender institution or adult prison; and if he will make a statement. [73058]
Mr. Hilary Benn: The Prison Service, on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, has responsibility for the day-to-day welfare needs of everyone who is committed to a young offender institution or adult prison, including those who are "looked after children".
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