Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people who were convicted of murder were released at the end of their original tariff in each of the last five years; how many people who were convicted of murder were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the past 5 years; and how many people who were convicted of domestic homicide were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the last five years.

Figures for question 1 are in Table 1. These are the number of first-time releases at the end of the original tariff following a mandatory life sentence.

Table 1. The number of people convicted of murder who were released at the end of their original tariff in each of the last five years:

Figures for question 2 are in Table 2. These are the number of recalls in the last five years for offenders who at the time of recall had a conviction for murder. The power to recall is a vital public protection measure and all individuals supervised under licence in the community are liable to recall to prison if they fail to comply with their licence conditions.

Table 2. The number of people convicted of murder who were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the last five years:

For question three, which relates specifically to those offenders convicted of domestic homicide, the data is not routinely available and the work to identify such cases would exceed the appropriate cost limit under the request for the provision of data.

Notes:

1. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by HM Prison & Probation Service. Consequently, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

2. Lifer Migration; These are prisoners who were sentenced prior to the introduction of the Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD), there records were migrated from paper files when the database was introduced in 2009.