Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people served prison sentences following convictions for burglary in each year since 2010.

Data on the number of prisoners serving sentences for burglary offences are routinely published within the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly publication. Please see annual Tables A1.5i (Row 64; for data for 2015 onwards) and A1.5ii (Row 18; for data covering 2010 - 2014).

Data on the number of prisoners serving sentences for shoplifting offences (for 2015 onwards) are routinely published in Row 76 of Table A1.5i. The offence categories used in the underlying prison population datasets before 2015 did not include shoplifting as a specific offence (i.e. it was included in a broader ‘Other Theft’ category). As such data for the number of prisoners serving sentences for shoplifting from 2010 – 2014 could only be obtained at disproportionate cost to the department as we would need to conduct a manual search of prisoner records for those with an ‘Other Theft’ offence to establish the number with mentions of ‘Shoplifting’ in the court summary.

Tables A1.5i and A1.5ii can be found at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1173712/Population_30June2023_Annual.ods.