Prisoners

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prisoners there are in England, broken down by age. (148401)

Age breakdown figures of all prisoners held in prison establishments within England can be found in the table as follows.

*Age breakdown for Prison establishments in England, May 2007*
	Number
All	77,609
15-17	2,396
18-20	8,170
21-24	12,382
25-29	14,812
30-39	21,097
40-49	12,253
50-59	4,378
60-64	1,083
65 and over	1,038
Note: Excluding prisoners held in police cells.

These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the prison population was in each year since 1992. (148423)

The figures requested are in the table as follows.

*Prison Population in England and Wales 1992-2007Figures as at 30 June*
	Number
1992	46,832
1993	44,246
1994	48,929
1995	51,084
1996	55,256
1997	61,467
1998	65,727
1999	64,529
2000	65,194
2001	66,403
2002	71,218
2003	73,657
2004	74,488
2005	76,190
2006	77,982
2007¹	80,264
¹May 2007 Sources: i. Prison Statistics England and Wales 1993 and 1994 table 1.2 ii. Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2005, Table 8.1 for 1995-2005 iii. Monthly population in custody Statistics 2006-2007 iv. Population in prison and police cells

These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Volume 462: debated on Wednesday 11 July 2007