Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the (a) ethnic background and (b) gender was of people serving custodial sentences in each year since 2010.

Figures for the prison population by ethnicity and gender are published and are available from the following link:

The Offender Management Statistics Quarterly publication includes a time series on the gender of the sentenced prison population and on the ethnicity of the combined sentenced and unsentenced prison population . Table A1.1 at the link below gives gender figures from June 2010 to June 2014 and table A1.7 by ethnic group:

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

The latest figures to March 2015, are available in Table 1.1 and 1.7 at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/424896/prison-population-q1-2015.xlsx