Remand in Custody: Females
(asked on 11th January 2023) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women have been held in prison on remand in each of the last five years; and of those women, how many were held for (a) six months or less, (b) over six months to 12 months (c) over 12 months to 18 months, (d) over 18 months to 24 months and (e) over 24 months.
The number of women in prison on remand in each of the last five years (as of a snapshot at September 30 in each year), by length of time on remand on that snapshot date, is provided in the below table. Increases in the remand population since March 2020 are believed to be associated with restrictions on court activity arising from the COVID pandemic, and more recently with industrial action from barristers.
| 30/09/2018 | 30/09/2019 | 30/09/2020 | 30/09/2021 | 30/09/2022 |
All | 549 | 571 | 614 | 620 | 673 |
6 months or less | 492 | 488 | 480 | 465 | 530 |
More than 6 months, up to 12 months | 45 | 64 | 99 | 116 | 98 |
More than 12 months, up to 18 months | 6 | 11 | 23 | 25 | 21 |
More than 18 months, up to 24 months | * | 5 | 8 | 9 | 13 |
More than 24 months | * | 3 | 4 | 5 | 11 |
Independent judges make the decision whether to remand a defendant based on the risk to public safety and whether they are likely to reoffend, abscond or obstruct the course of justice.
Data sources and quality
The figures in this table 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.
Time on remand estimation
For those in the remand prison population this estimation is based on the difference between the date of an individual’s first entry to the prison estate for the current set of [alleged / proven] offences and the date of the data extract [in this case 30 Sep 2022]. This may not accurately reflect ‘time on remand’ for reasons including that the ‘remand spell’ has a ceiling of the date of the extract (i.e. that this isn’t the end of the period of time on remand), and also that it may include time on bail in the community (for example for individuals who are bailed, but then breach bail conditions and are remanded in custody).
Disclosure control
An asterisk (*) has been used to suppress values of two or less. This is to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further disclosure control may be completed where this alone is not sufficient.
Source: Prison NOMIS
PQ 121085 (Ministry of Justice; Data and Analysis (Directorate))