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Prison Accommodation

Volume 494: debated on Tuesday 16 June 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many adult male sentenced prisoners are held in category (a) A, (b) B, (c) C and (d) D prisons in England and Wales; (278701)

(2) what the average prison population as a proportion of the in-use certified normal accommodation in category (a) A, (b) B, (c) C and (d) D prisons in England and Wales was on the most recent date for which figures are available.

The following table shows the numbers of adult males serving sentences in prison establishments as at 30 April 2009 by category of prison:

Adult male prisoners serving sentences

Number

High security prisons holding sentenced and remand prisoners up to Category A

4,551

Local and training prisons holding sentenced and remand prisoners up to Category B

25,067

Training prisons holding sentenced prisoners up to Category C

22,522

Open prisons taking Category D prisoners

3,841

Total

55,981

The Security categories A, B, C, and D relate to categories of adult male prisoner. Female prisoners and young offenders are not categorised in this way.

The following table shows the numbers of prisoners in the categories of prison set out above, compared with the numbers in the certified normal accommodation:

Total prison population

Total certified normal accommodation

Ratio (percentage)

High security prisons holding sentenced and remand prisoners up to Category A

5,845

5,392

108

Local and training prisons holding sentenced and remand prisoners up to Category B

35,312

27,780

127

Training prisons holding sentenced prisoners up to Category C

23,696

22,461

105

Open prisons taking Category D prisoners

4,220

4,312

98

Certified Normal Accommodation (CNA), or uncrowded capacity, is the Prison Service’s own measure of accommodation.

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.