Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average proportion of (a) male and (b) female prisoners held in (i) open, (ii) closed and (iii) resettlement prisons was in each of the last five years.

The proportion of male and female prisoners held in open, closed and resettlement prisons in England and Wales, for years 2010 - 2014, can be found in table 1.

Categorisation and allocation to open prison is never an automatic progression. Public protection is foremost in the decision making process. Only prisoners whose risks are manageable in conditions of low security will be allocated to an open prison. Where necessary, offending behaviour work will be undertaken in closed conditions in order to reduce an offender's risk before transfer.

Once allocated to open prison, prisoners continue to be monitored and are returned to closed prison immediately if there are any concerns about their suitability for low security conditions.

Placing a prisoner in open conditions serves two main purposes. Firstly, it facilitates the eventual resettlement of prisoners into the community, in conditions more similar to those that they will face in the community than closed conditions can provide. Open prisons provide resettlement benefits including opportunities for training and employment, to re-establish family ties and to enable housing needs to be met prior to the prisoner’s eventual release into the community.

Secondly, it allows for risk to be assessed in order to inform release decisions and, should the prisoner secure release, to inform risk management plans for ongoing supervision in the community. Thus, for many prisoners who have spent a considerable amount of time in custody, this can assist in their successful reintegration in the community and help protect the public.

Keeping the public safe is our priority. That is why the current Government has taken action on both releases on temporary licence (ROTL) and absconds from prison. Last year, a fundamental review of ROTL policy and practice was commissioned and, in March 2014, a package of measures was announced to ensure that the public was properly protected. Some of those measures have been brought forward so that they begin to take effect immediately, particularly with more serious offenders where the review concluded that an enhanced risk assessment approach should be taken.

The public have understandable concerns about the failure of some prisoners to return from temporary release from open prison. Keeping the public safe is our priority and we will not allow the actions of a small minority of offenders to undermine public confidence in the prison system. The number of temporary release failures remains very low—less than one failure in every 1,000 releases and about five in every 100,000 releases involving alleged offending—but we take each and every incident seriously. The Government has already ordered immediate changes to tighten up the system as a matter of urgency. Prisoners are no longer transferred to open conditions if they have previously absconded from open prisons, or if they have failed to return or re-offended while released on temporary licence.