Prisoners

(asked on 4th July 2022) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to improve the publication of disaggregated data on prisoners’ demographics and protected characteristics including (a) gender, (b) ethnic group, (c) age and (d) religion.


Answered by
Stuart Andrew Portrait
Stuart Andrew
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
This question was answered on 12th July 2022

Data on prisoners’ gender, ethnicity, age and religion is obtained through self-declaration by prisoners on reception into custody. Declaration rates across Sex, Age, Ethnicity & Religion are high and present no barrier to publishing of prison population data.

We are currently developing a new service to improve the creation of prisoner records and collection of data which will include protected characteristics. This will reduce duplication and improve storage of information by redesigning the way we ask questions about these characteristics.

There are no current plans to change the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly publication which provide regular data on sex, ethnicity, age and religion within the prison population.

Reticulating Splines