Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of recalls to prison in England and Wales in the first three months of 2026 resulted from a suspicion that further crimes had been committed.

The number of prisoner releases and prisoner recalls are routinely published in the Department’s Offender Management Statistics Quarterly (OMSQ) publication. Between January and March 2026, there were 12,977 releases of prisoners from determinate and indeterminate sentences from prisons in England & Wales.

In this context, a ‘release’ is defined as a release from prison where the prisoner has finished serving the custodial element of their sentence, and excludes scenarios such as ‘releases from remand’, ‘releases to hospital’ and ‘re-releases following recall’. As such, this release number is not comparable to the recall number presented below.

Between January and March 2026, there were 13,193 recalls to custody.

Offenders do not always immediately return to custody after they have been recalled. In addition, these numbers include offenders who may have been recalled, and/or released multiple times in the same period.

Of the 13,193 recalls to prison in England and Wales between January and March 2026, 22% were in connection with an offender being charged with further offending.