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Dartmoor Prison: Ex-servicemen

Volume 503: debated on Monday 11 January 2010

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the outcome was of the 2007 scoping study of the number of armed forces veterans who were serving a sentence in HMP Dartmoor. (308607)

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) had no oversight of this research at the time it was conducted and have no records of the outcomes of this research. From our communication with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) it appears that the research was conducted by a worker in HMP Dartmoor but on an ad-hoc basis and with no official or central oversight by either MOJ or MOD. Preliminary results which found that 32 of the 191 prisoners (16.75 per cent.) were veterans, were presented at a meeting of the Veterans Prison In-Reach Working Group (VPIR), a group sponsored by the MOD. It is likely that the result was skewed because the wings were largely comprised of older prisoners which meant that they were more likely than other prisoners to have served in the armed forces at some time (including under national service).