Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the trends in the prison population for (a) male and (b) female prisoners over the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement.

The MoJ regularly publishes a range of statistics on the prison population alongside appropriate commentary discussing long term trends.

Every three months, the MoJ publishes “Offender Management Statistics Quarterly” which looks at more recent trends in the prison population. The most recent edition of this publication covers the period from March 2014 to March 2015. This is available at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2014-and-annual

Additionally, as part of the edition published in July each year, a set of tables looking at long term trends in the prison population since the year 2002 are published. These were last published in July 2014, covering the period from June 2002 to June 2014. This document is available at the link below:

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

Biannually, the MoJ publishes “Women and the Criminal Justice System”. Chapter 8 of this report considers the prison population. This document is available at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2013