Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average cost to the public purse was of (a) community supervision and (b) custodial prison sentences for female prisoners in each year for which data is available.

Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) does not calculate separately the average cost of community supervision by gender. Additionally, the information recorded on the HMPPS central accounting system does not allow the identification of such costs.

In respect of information for average cost for female prisoners serving custodial prison sentences, HMPPS routinely publishes average costs per prisoner, costs per prison place and overall prison unit costs for each private and public sector prison in England and Wales, including all categories of the female estate. This information is produced on an annual basis and is published after the end of each financial year.

Information on prison expenditure for previous financial years can be accessed in the Prison and Probation Performance Statistics pages for each financial year on the www.gov.uk website. Prison unit costs can be found within the Excel document Costs per prison place and cost per prisoner by individual prison establishment in the ‘Cost by Establishment’ tab.

The most recent published figures for financial year 2016-17 can be accessed on the www.gov.uk website from the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic s/prison-performance-statistics-2016-to-2017