Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many years left to serve has each determinate sentence prisoner who absconded from open conditions in the last year.

Progression to open prison is never automatic and only those prisoners who are assessed as a low risk of harm to the public and a low risk of abscond will be held in open conditions. Prisoners serving longer sentences may be allocated to open prison towards the end of their sentence but only where they have successfully completed relevant offending behaviour work that is judged to have reduced any risks. In the case of ISPs this generally involves a recommendation from the Parole Board. The table below shows how many days each offender had been in open conditions prior to the date of abscond.

Table 1: Number of days served in open prison prior to absconding, January 2014 to March 2014

Figures from April 2014 onwards are not yet available. Over 97% of prisoners who abscond are re-captured and returned to custody.

Absconds have reached record lows under this Government. Abscond levels are down 80% over the last 10 years.

The sentence length at the time of the abscond is not readily available for all absconds in 2013/14. As sentences can change due to further criminal or prison offences it would be necessary to write out to each establishment and analyse each prisoner’s records to determine the remaining sentence length at the time of the abscond. This could only be achieved at disproportionate cost.

Figures for the number of absconds, by prison, since 1995 are provided in the Prison Digest contained in the Prison and Probation Trusts Performance Statistics. This can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-and-probation-trusts-performance-statistics-201314