Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many and what proportion of (1) men, and (2) women, arriving in custody have self-declared as part of the basic custody screening interview that they have been in the care of local authority children’s services, in each year since 2016.

The information requested is set out in the table below. This table provides only a count of Basic Custody Screenings where care experience was disclosed and does not provide this as a proportion of all BCSs completed over the time period so caution should be applied when considering trends.

Note:

1. The figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the level of detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system.

Basic Custody Screening data does not provide a full picture of the number of prisoners disclosing care experience each year, as it does not include data for prisoners who choose to disclose care experience at later points during their time in custody.

We know that people taken into care as children are disproportionately likely to end up in the criminal justice system, with research estimating that 24-31 per cent of the adult prison population spent time in care as children.

We are committed to addressing this disproportionality in England and Wales, both by improving support for people with care experience while in the criminal justice system, and by working with colleagues across government to reduce the number of people with care experience who enter the criminal justice system. As part of this, HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) plans to publish a new ‘Supporting Prisoners with Care Experience’ policy framework in spring 2026.