Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many category (a) B, (b) C and (c) A prisoners have escaped from prison in each of the last four years.
The number of escapes from custody has been falling since 1995 when central records began, despite an increasing prison population, and has fallen dramatically in the last few years, with only 8 since 2010. There have been no escapes of Category A or B prisoners from prison establishments in this period. This compares to more than 90 over the previous decade. But we are not complacent and there are rigorous security checks in place to reduce the risk of this happening.
The table below shows the number of Category C prisoners who have escaped from prison establishments between 2010/11 and 2013/14.
Table 1 Escapes of Category C prisoners, by year, April 2010 to March 2014
Year | Category C |
2010/11 | 1 |
2012/13 | 1 |
Figures for the number of escapes since 1995 are provided in the Prison Digest contained in the Prison and Probation Trusts Performance Statistics. This can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-and-probation-trusts-performance-statistics-201314