Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners who are in open prisons are serving (a) a life and (b) an indeterminate sentence for public protection.

As at 31 March 2015 in England and Wales, there were 1,049 indeterminate sentenced prisoners in open prisons, of which 511 were serving life sentences and 538 were serving an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection.

The figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

The categorisation and allocation of any offender to open prison is never an automatic progression, with public protection the paramount consideration in the decision-making process. Only prisoners whose risks are assessed as being manageable in conditions of low security will be allocated to an open prison.

The vast majority of indeterminate sentence prisoners will be transferred to open conditions only following a positive recommendation from the independent Parole Board. Where they can show that they have made exceptional progress and where there are no known or documented concerns about their risk of harm or risk of abscond, they may be transferred without a positive recommendation from the Parole Board.

Last year, decisive action was taken to protect the public by changing the policy by which prisoners may be transferred to open conditions. As a result of a comprehensive review, major changes were made to tighten the eligibility for open prisons. Prisoners may no longer be transferred to open conditions or allowed to be released on temporary licence if they have, on the current sentence, previously absconded, escaped, attempted to escape, or if they have failed to return or have re-offended whilst released on temporary licence, unless there are exceptional circumstances.