Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many people have been killed by someone who has previously been found guilty of homicide, imprisoned, and subsequently released, for the years for which figures are available.

The table below provides the number of people killed by offenders who were at the time on licence for an earlier homicide offence, for which they had served a prison sentence and been released. As they were on licence, when they were charged with a new offence of killing [homicide], it would have generated a formal serious further offence (SFO) notification to HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), and the number in each calendar year reflects the year in which HMPPS received the notification. The answer interprets homicide to include offences of murder, manslaughter, death by dangerous driving and death by careless driving when under the influence of drink or drugs.

Data are not available on offenders with a previous conviction for homicide who had completed their sentence and associated statutory probation supervision by probation and then went on to commit a further homicide.

SFOs are rare. Fewer than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are convicted of serious further offences. Nonetheless every single serious further offence is taken extremely seriously, and in all cases a review is carried out to identify any lessons for the better management of future cases.

1. We will publish SFO conviction data for 2019/20 in October 2021, therefore data for 2019 can only be provided for January, February and March.
2. Figures are based on conviction data that was produced in September 2020.
3. Data are derived from the date of SFO notification to HMPPS
4. This figure only includes convictions for serious further offences that have been notified to the national SFO Team, HMPPS.
5. The data provided are provisional figures subject to change when any outstanding cases are concluded at court.
6. The data also includes cases where the offender committed suicide or died prior to the trial, where a Court has subsequently ruled that they were responsible.

Data Sources and Quality. We have drawn these figures from administrative IT systems which, as with some large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.