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8 Jan 2007 : Column 153W—continued
| Percentage | |
| (b) Prisoners on remand | |
| (1) Percentage not shown where the total is less than 10 prisoners because of distortion. | |
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people are serving prison sentences, broken down into the number of times they have been in prison. [108850]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Information on the number of sentenced prisoners held in prison establishments in England and Wales can be found in table 1 of the National Offender Management Service Population in Custody Monthly Tables for October 2006 which is accessible at the following weblink:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/prisoct06.pdf
Statistical information on the number of times prisoners have been in prison is not held centrally and could not be provided without disproportionate cost.
The figures provided in the website referred to have been drawn from administrative IT systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system, and although shown to the last individual the figures may not be accurate to that level.
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provisions there are (a) to limit and (b) to prohibit the sharing of cells by prisoners in each prison; and whether there has been any change to those provisions since 2001. [109049]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Prison population pressures, resource constraints and the safe running of prisons place practical limits on the extent of enforced cell-sharing. Subject to risk assessment, cell-sharing can also benefit prisoners at risk of suicide and self-harm.
The capacity of cells for multiple occupancy is determined by the cell certification process, while the suitability of individual prisoners to be allocated to shared cells is determined by a cell sharing risk assessment. The cell certification process has not changed since 2001, while the cell-sharing risk assessment was last revised in 2005.
Mr. Benyon: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many minutes of free telephone calls prisoners in England and Wales are allowed each week. [110304]
Mr. Sutcliffe [holding answer 19 December 2006]: Prisoners do not receive a weekly allowance of free phone calls but may purchase credits in 1 units to their personal Pinphone telephone account.
A prisoner may receive credits on their Pinphone telephone account, at public expense, to make a short call on his/her first reception into prison, or be permitted to make a short call using an official telephone in response to an urgent family crisis. In the interests of maintaining family ties, prisoners with close family abroad who have not received a social visit during the preceding month may be allowed credit at public expense to make a five minute telephone call.
The volume of calls made at public expense is not recorded centrally.
Probation Service
Margaret Moran: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what monitoring and evaluation his Department carried out on perpetrators programmes run by the Probation Service. [105326]
Mr. Sutcliffe: The National Probation Service has two accredited programmes for domestic violence (DV) perpetrators. All accredited programmes have in place monitoring systems to ensure that they are delivered properly. They have a complementary programme of research which will allow evaluation of the effectiveness of the programme. The monitoring includes assessment of perpetrators, supervision of programme facilitators, attendance monitoring, and video recording of all programmes sessions.
The Home Office is planning two studies: a process evaluation (which will aim to assess whether programmes are being delivered as intended by all probation areas; assess whether data is being collated and to what quality; make an assessment of readiness for a full-scale outcome evaluation; and provide recommendations for operational and design improvements to the DV programmes) and a study of desistance (which will aim to provide some in-depth explanatory information on how DV programmes assisted a small number of offenders to desist from crime after completing their order).
In the longer term, an independent evaluation of the outcomes is planned, which will use reconviction rates, police call-out data, victim reports and psychometric assessment as outcome measures. This will not begin until we are confident the programmes are being implemented satisfactorily.
Procurement Projects
Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the 20 largest procurement projects initiated by his Department since May 1997 have been; what the (a) original budget, (b) cost to date and (c) consultancy fees have been; and what the final cost was of each project which has been completed. [106574]
Mr. McNulty: From the best currently available information, details of the 20 largest procurement projects initiated by the Department inclusive of its Executive Agencies since May 1997 are in the following table.
The procurement projects, which were initiated through the placement of a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), are listed by (a) original budget, or where unavailable by contract value, and where available (b) cost to date, (c) consultancy fees, and, where completed, the final cost of each project.
Some information is either irretrievable to the format requested, or is held in a discontinued accounting system. To supply this data would incur disproportionate cost.
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