Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were released from prison on each Friday in the last six months.

The information requested is extracted from the most recent data available and is detailed in the table attached.

Prisoners are released when they have a statutory entitlement to be released once they have reached their automatic release date, or are released on a discretionary basis by the Parole Board, the Secretary of State or through early release on Home Detention Curfew (HDC) by prison governors.

If the automatic release date – which for the majority of prisoners is the half-way point in their sentence – falls on a weekend or Bank holiday, the law (Section 23(3) Criminal Justice Act 1961) requires the release to be brought forward to the first preceding working day. To defer the release date would mean holding the person unlawfully.

The exception is where the sentence is 5 days or less. In such cases the law provides for release to be on the Saturday if the automatic release date falls on a weekend or Bank Holiday.

We have no evidence of any statistically significant difference in reoffending outcomes for prisoners released on a Friday.