Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the highest number of absconds from prison by an individual offender has been in the last 20 years.

To identify how many prisoners have absconded on more than one occasion in the last twenty years, or the highest number of absconds by an individual, would require a manual examination of the prison record of every prisoner who had absconded in this time frame. This could only be achieved at disproportionate cost.

As a result of improved risk assessment procedures the number of prisoners absconding from open prisons has reduced significantly over the last 10 years. There were 225 absconds in 2013-14 compared to 1,301 in 2003-04.