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Crimes of Violence: Prisoners Release

Volume 467: debated on Thursday 15 November 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many offenders released on end of custody licences from each prison in England and Wales since 29th June had been convicted of violence against the person. (164180)

This information is available on the Ministry of Justice website. The total number of releases by offence group for the first week of the scheme, the remainder of July, and every subsequent month since then. For the period from 29 June to 30 September there have been 1,544 releases.

29 June to 5 July 2007:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/2007-07tables-for-ECL-report.xls

6 July to 31 July 2007:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/stats-ecl-0707.pdf

1 August to 31 August 2007:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/stats-ecl-0807.pdf

1 September to 30 September 2007:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/stats-ecl-0907.pdf

It is not possible to reliably determine the numbers released in the violence against the person group for individual establishments, which would require checking of the precise offence for each release. Individual case records at every establishment would need to be checked to ensure accuracy, at disproportionate cost.

Prison service guidance makes it clear that prisoners serving sentences for the most serious types of violence against the person offences are ineligible for release under End of Custody Licence. The list of excluded offences is at Annex A to Prison Service Instruction 42/2007 which is available on the Prison Service website.

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.