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Prison Sentences

Volume 471: debated on Wednesday 30 January 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what average length of sentence had been served by each of those serving life sentences who were released from prison in each year since 2000; and if he will make a statement. (182626)

Information on the average time served by first released lifer prisoners from all prison establishments in England and Wales in each year since 2000 can be found in the following table.

Mean time served by lifers released from prison on first release in England and Wales 2000-06

Mean time served (in years)

2000

13

2001

13

2002

14

2003

15

2004

14

2005

14

2006

14

Note:

Table taken from table 10.5 of Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2006

http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/prisonandprobation.htm

If released, life sentence prisoners are on licence for the rest of their lives and liable to recall at any time.

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.