Chris Huhne:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people serving custodial sentences for each type of offence of (a) less than one month, (b) between one and three months, (c) between three and six months and (d) between six and 12 months were in prison on average at any one time in each of the last 10 years. [232310]
Mr. Hanson:
Figures showing the numbers of prisoners serving sentences in all prison establishments in England and Wales by offence group and in the sentence length bands requested can be found in the following table.
4 Nov 2008 : Column 320W
I refer also to the Offender Management Caseload Statistics, 2007, published on 30 October, copies of which have been placed in the House of Commons Library. This will provide additional context to the statistics supplied in the answer.
The breakdowns in the table for the years 2002-06 are further breakdowns of tables to be found in earlier editions of the Offender Management Caseload Statistics (table 8.12 for 2006) and Prison Statistics for England and Wales. Data are not available to provide equivalent further breakdowns for the years 1998 to 2001, and the statistics provided for these years are therefore taken from the annual published table in Prison Statistics for England and Wales.
The figures provided have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Immediate custodial sentenced population in prison establishments by sentence length and offence group
