Prisoner Escapes

(asked on 2nd May 2018) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders serving a sentence for murder (a) absconded and (b) escaped in the last year for which data is available; and what the circumstances were in which each of those offenders absconded or escaped.


Answered by
 Portrait
Rory Stewart
This question was answered on 14th May 2018

In 2016/17 there were 4 absconds and 2 escapes of offenders serving a sentence for murder. For the two offenders who escaped, the circumstances involved escape from hospital escort.

These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS (formerly NOMS) Incident Reporting System. Care is taken when processing and analysing the returns but the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system.

Public protection is our top priority and we take escapes and absconds from custody extremely seriously. Escapes are extremely rare and escaped prisoners recaptured by police face prosecution and on return to prison their categorisation is reviewed.

Less than two per cent of offenders abscond from open prison, and the overall number of absconds has halved since 2011/12. But whilst absconds are rare, we are not complacent and carefully risk assess all offenders before they move to open prisons. Those who do abscond are returned to closed prisons where they may have to serve additional time.

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