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Prisoners: Foreigners

Volume 504: debated on Wednesday 27 January 2010

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many (a) male and (b) female foreign national prisoners there are, broken down by (i) offence category and (ii) length of sentence. (313199)

The most recent data available relate to June 2009. The following tables give the numbers of (a) male and (b) female foreign national prisoners (FNPs) showing both (i) offence category and (ii) length of sentence.

Offence category

Male

Female

Total

Violence against the person

1,588

53

1,640

Sexual offences

881

11

892

Robbery

605

6

611

Burglary

292

8

300

Theft and handling

265

56

322

Fraud and forgery

779

149

928

Drug offences

1,841

297

2,138

Motoring offences

131

0

131

Other offences

479

35

515

Offence not recorded

23

2

25

Total

6,884

618

7,502

Sentence length

Male

Female

Total

Less than or equal to six months

588

86

674

Greater than six and less than 12 months

280

36

316

12 months less to than four years

2,015

172

2,188

Four years to less than life

2,973

301

3,273

Indeterminate (including life)

1,028

24

1,052

Total

6,884

618

7,502

In addition to the 7,502 sentenced prisoners, a further 3,848 were either untried, convicted unsentenced, a fine defaulter or non-criminals, giving a total of 11,350.

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.