Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of a prisoner serving (a) two, (b) three, (c) four, (d) five and (e) six years in prison.

An average cost per prisoner, costs per prison place and overall prison unit costs for each private and public sector prison in England and Wales are routinely published by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). This information is produced on an annual basis and is published after the end of each financial year on the gov.uk website.

The most recently published costs are for the financial year 2020-21 and can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prison-performance-data-2020-to-2021.

We do not calculate information by length of sentence, but by the average cost of an offender over the course of a single year across establishments, by prison category and overall.