Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners serving sentences for (a) violent and (b) sexual offences have been transferred to open prisons in the last five years.

The relevant data for this PQ has been attached alongside the answer.

Prisoners are required to pass thorough risk assessments to become eligible for a move into open conditions, and we retain the ability to return prisoners to closed conditions if there is any evidence of an increased risk.

Under the Temporary Presumptive Recategorisation Scheme (TPRS), which aims to improve efficiency across the prison estate, prisoners convicted of all sexual and violent offenders serving a sentence of at least four years are ineligible to move to open conditions.