Prison Accommodation

(asked on 18th December 2014) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders held in a cell designed for one inmate shared it with (a) one other and (b) more than one other inmate in each of the last four years.


Answered by
Andrew Selous Portrait
Andrew Selous
Second Church Estates Commissioner
This question was answered on 5th January 2015

Figures for the number of prisoners held two to a cell designed for one (known as ‘doubling’) are set out in the table below for the years 2008-09 to 2013-14. To place the numbers in context they are shown alongside the average prisoner population and the percentage of the population held two to a cell designed for one.

Year

Average number of prisoners held two to a cell designed for one

Average prisoner population

% of average prisoner population held two to a cell designed for one

2008-09

19,153

82,830

23.1

2009-10

19,083

83,971

22.7

2010-11

19,268

84,920

22.7

2011-12

20,152

86,638

23.3

2012-13

19,044

85,729

22.2

2013-14

18,515

84,594

21.9

While the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) collects the total number of prisoners held in crowded conditions (e.g. two prisoners held in a cell designed for one, or three prisoners held in a cell designed for two) it does not centrally record how many prisoners were held in a cell designed for one prisoner and shared it with more than one other prisoner. To identify the number of prisoners who were held in a cell designed for one but shared it with more than one other prisoner in each of the last four years would require manually going through individual prison cell certificate records in each prison, followed by a manual trawl of prisoners' individuals records to identify each prisoner’s cell location in each of the last four years, which could only be undertaken at disproportionate cost.

We will always have enough prison places for those sent to us by the courts and continue to modernise the prison estate so that it delivers best value for the taxpayer. This Government has a long term strategy for managing the prison estate which will provide more adult male prison capacity than we inherited from the previous Government.

Crowding occurs when the number of prisoners in an accommodation unit exceeds the Certified Normal Accommodation in that unit. The average rate of crowding is published in NOMS Annual Report and Accounts.

In 2013-14, the average number of prisoners held in crowded conditions decreased to 22.9% of the total population compared to 23.3% in 2012-13. This is the lowest level since 2001-02 and has come down from a high of 25.3% in 2007-08.

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