Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of the prison population was in jail for (a) sex-related offences, (b) vehicle crime, (c) violent crime, (d) drug-related offences, (e) benefit-related fraud and (f) non-benefit-related fraud in each year since 2005.

Crime is falling and under this Government more offenders are going to prison and for longer. In 2012 the law was changed to introduce an automatic life sentence for a second very serious sexual or violent offence and there are several measures to strengthen sentencing in this area in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, currently going through Parliament.

These include ending automatic half-way point release for criminals convicted of child rape and ensuring that all dangerous offenders who receive the tough Extended Determinate Sentence (EDS) are no longer automatically released two-thirds of the way through their custodial term. The Government has also banned the use of simple cautions for serious offences.

Information on the number of offenders in prison by offence group in England and Wales is published routinely in the ‘Offender Management Statistics Quarterly bulletin’ and can be found in Table A1.4 of the annual prison population tables. Copies of the current publication and those of previous years are available from the Library of the House and via the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/339036/prison-population-2014.xls