Prison Sentences
(asked on 23rd November 2020) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the breakdown of the tariff-expired unreleased life prisoner population by (1) original tariff length, and (2) time over tariff.
Answered by
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The tariff-expired unreleased lifer prisoner population, broken down by original tariff length and time over tariff as of 30 September 2020, is shown in the following table:
| Original Tariff Length | |||
Time over tariff | Less than or equal to 10 years | Greater than 10 years to less than or equal to 20 years | More than 20 years | Total |
Less than 1 year | 46 | 135 | 6 | 187 |
From 1 year to less than 2 years | 43 | 96 | 5 | 144 |
From 2 years to less than 3 years | 25 | 68 | 8 | 101 |
From 3 years to less than 4 years | 27 | 50 | 2 | 79 |
From 4 years to less than 5 years | 22 | 51 | 3 | 76 |
From 5 years to less than 6 years | 29 | 37 | 4 | 70 |
From 6 years to less than 7 years | 37 | 45 | 3 | 85 |
From 7 years to less than 8 years | 31 | 39 | 1 | 71 |
From 8 years to less than 9 years | 41 | 33 | 2 | 76 |
From 9 years to less than 10 years | 62 | 31 | 2 | 95 |
From 10 years to less than 11 years | 47 | 27 | 3 | 77 |
From 11 years to less than 12 years | 64 | 13 | 3 | 80 |
From 12 years to less than 13 years | 54 | 14 | 1 | 69 |
From 13 years to less than 14 years | 54 | 14 | 0 | 68 |
From 14 years to less than 15 years | 48 | 19 | 2 | 69 |
From 15 years to less than 16 years | 47 | 13 | 1 | 61 |
From 16 years to less than 17 years | 25 | 9 | 0 | 34 |
From 17 years to less than 18 years | 24 | 18 | 0 | 42 |
From 18 years to less than 19 years | 21 | 10 | 0 | 31 |
From 19 years to less than 20 years | 14 | 7 | 0 | 21 |
20 years or more | 80 | 55 | 3 | 138 |
Total | 841 | 784 | 49 | 1,674 |
These figures have been drawn from the Public Protection Unit Database held by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. As with any large scale recording systems, the figures are subject to possible errors with data migration and processing.
It may be useful to note that statistics on the indeterminate population in prisons are routinely published as part of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly on Gov.uk - https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/offender-management-statistics-quarterly .
I would like to be clear that our primary responsibility is to protect the public. We do not want to keep indeterminate sentenced prisoners in custody any longer than is necessary, but we have a duty to ensure that they are progressed in a safe manner. It remains the case that prisoners serving life and other indeterminate sentences will be released only when the independent Parole Board concludes that the risk to the public is capable of being safely managed in the community under probation supervision.