Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence have been transferred from prison to secure hospitals on mental health grounds in each year since 2020.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Under sections 47/49 of the Mental Health Act 1983, the Secretary of State may authorise by warrant the transfer of sentenced prisoners to a mental health hospital, where he is satisfied that the criteria for detention are met by the aforementioned Act. Thereby, and for the duration of the period in hospital, the transferred prisoner becomes what is known as a restricted patient.
The requested data in the tables below are taken from an electronic casework system. Snapshot data of restricted patients in hospital are available only at the end of each year. We have provided this information in Table 1 for 2019-2022. We are unable to recreate snapshot data, for the start of each of the last 20 quarters, due to limitations of the case management system.
Table 1: Population of offenders serving a sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) detained in hospital as a restricted patient on 31 December in each year from 2019-2023.
Year | Population of IPP Restricted Patients |
2019 | 272 |
2020 | 276 |
2021 | 292 |
2022 | 262 |
2023 | 241 |
Table 2: The number of offenders serving an IPP sentence who have been transferred from prison to secure hospitals on mental health grounds in each year since 2020.
Year | Number of transfers |
2020 | 56 |
2021 | 41 |
2022 | 44 |
2023 | 37 |
Notes
Data Source: Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD)
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people serving an imprisonment for a Public Protection sentence were held in secure hospitals at the start of the last 20 quarters.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Under sections 47/49 of the Mental Health Act 1983, the Secretary of State may authorise by warrant the transfer of sentenced prisoners to a mental health hospital, where he is satisfied that the criteria for detention are met by the aforementioned Act. Thereby, and for the duration of the period in hospital, the transferred prisoner becomes what is known as a restricted patient.
The requested data in the tables below are taken from an electronic casework system. Snapshot data of restricted patients in hospital are available only at the end of each year. We have provided this information in Table 1 for 2019-2022. We are unable to recreate snapshot data, for the start of each of the last 20 quarters, due to limitations of the case management system.
Table 1: Population of offenders serving a sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) detained in hospital as a restricted patient on 31 December in each year from 2019-2023.
Year | Population of IPP Restricted Patients |
2019 | 272 |
2020 | 276 |
2021 | 292 |
2022 | 262 |
2023 | 241 |
Table 2: The number of offenders serving an IPP sentence who have been transferred from prison to secure hospitals on mental health grounds in each year since 2020.
Year | Number of transfers |
2020 | 56 |
2021 | 41 |
2022 | 44 |
2023 | 37 |
Notes
Data Source: Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD)
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence on licence in the community took their own life in each year since 2010.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The number of self-inflicted deaths of offenders serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence on licence in the community in England and Wales in each year between April 2019 and March 2023 are shown in the table.
Self-inflicted deaths of offenders serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence supervised on licence in the community, financial year 2019/20 to 2022/23, England and Wales (1) (2) (3)
| 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 (p) |
Total | 6 | 11 | 9 | 7 |
(p) The 2022/23 figures are provisional and may be updated in future publications to account for any changes or additions to the data since they were originally collected.
1. Apparent cause is as reported in annual returns (prior to 2020/21 only) or the national Delius case management system (nDelius) and has not been independently verified.
2. The reporting period relates to when the death occurred.
3. A new set of death classifications was implemented on 1 April 2022 and, as such, figures for 2022/23 are not comparable to those presented for previous years. The category of 'self-inflicted death' up to 31 March 2022 includes any death of a person who has apparently taken his or her own life, irrespective of intent. The category of 'self-inflicted death' from 1 April 2022 includes any death of a person at their own hand, including where intent is undetermined. This includes some drug poisonings (e.g. where a suicide note is found or the circumstances are suspicious) but not drug poisonings which appear to have been the accidental result of consumption for another purpose. Refer to the guide to deaths of offenders supervised in the community statistics for further details about the new set of classifications.
The information for the period before April 2019 could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.