November 9, 2004: New Prison Statistics Published

New quarterly statistics for the custodial population in England and Wales have been published by the Offender Management Analysis section of the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate. They provide details on the period from January to March 2004.

Key points include:

• The population in custody at the end of March 2004 was 75,770 (3 percent up on March 2003). This is similar to increases over the previous 3 quarters. The population in custody included 75,295 held in prison and 475 people aged under 18 held in Local Authority Secure Children’s Homes and Secure Training Centres. This is a change to previous recording practice (in, for example, Prison Statistics England and Wales) where ‘population in custody’ just covered those held in prison establishments and police cells.
• Recent increases (up to the first quarter of 2004) in the sentenced prison population have been partly because more people have been received into prison under sentence. For example, the number received for sentences of less than or equal to 6 months increased by 13 percent. Offences with significant increases in shorter sentence receptions included assault and bail act offences. The population under sentences of 4 years or more also increased reflecting the continuing impact of longer custodial sentences in previous years.
• The female prison population increased by 4 percent between March 2003 and March 2004, marginally more than the increase in the male prison population of 3 per cent over the same period.
• The large increases seen in previous quarters in the number of people received into prison for defaulting on fine payment continued in the first quarter of 2004; up 53 per cent to 451 on the first quarter 2003. (As they serve very short periods in prison, fine defaulters accounted for 0.1 percent of the total prison population at the end of March 2004.)
• 1,687 prisoners were considered for parole in the first quarter of 2004 with 52 percent of them being recommended for parole. The number of females cases considered for parole increased by 9 per cent while the number of male cases decreased by 1 per cent.

Information on the prison population and ethnicity  will be published later. However, the population of female foreign nationals fell by 2 percent between March 2003 and March 2004. Prisoners of Jamaican nationality accounted for the largest group of female foreign nationals, at 35 per cent of this group. Male foreign nationals continued to increase (up 4 percent), but at slower rate than in 2003.

Monthly tables of population in custody statistics are available on the Home Office website here.