Prisoners: Buckinghamshire

(asked on 5th February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners serving sentences in each prison across the prison estate were resident in Buckinghamshire prior to their sentencing.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 10th February 2021

As at 31 December 2020 (latest data available), there were 7 prisoners held across HMPs Grendon and Springhill* who had a recorded home address in a Buckinghamshire local authority area.

As at 31 December, there were 371 sentenced male and female prisoners aged 18 and over held in other prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales who had a recorded home address in a Buckinghamshire local authority area. However, most of these individuals were not suitable to be held in either Grendon or Springhill due to their security category, their time left to serve, their individual resettlement needs or their specific offending behaviour requirements, which are best provided at other prisons.

Grendon and Springhill are both designated as national resources and can, at any time, reasonably expect to hold prisoners from across England and Wales. In the case of Grendon, this is because of the unique suite of interventions that they provide. In the case of Springhill, this is because there is not an even geographical spread of Open Prisons and, therefore, they are all designated as national resources. This means that, although every effort is made to ensure that most prisoners are in the closest Open Prison to their release address, this is not always in their home county.

There are complex and wide-ranging issues involved in transferring and locating prisoners, and allocation decisions must reflect both the specific needs and circumstances of the prisoner, including their security category, as well as the operating environment and range of services at the receiving prison.

HMPPS is committed to ensuring, where practicable, that prisoners are accommodated as close as possible to their resettlement communities and families. Whilst this is a priority, it is not always possible due to a variety of factors including wider population pressures, or where individuals have specific sentence planning needs which can only be met at certain establishments.

* If a request is made for information and the total figure amounts to five people or fewer, the MoJ must consider whether this could lead to the identification of individuals and whether disclosure of this information would be in breach of our statutory obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018. For this reason, the MoJ has chosen not to provide an exact figure where the true number falls between one and five. The figures for HMP Grendon and HMP Springhill have therefore been presented as a composite and breakdowns by individual prison have not been provided.

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