To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether people (a) whose date of birth was unavailable, (b) sent to prison before 1979 and (c) who had been reservists counted for the purposes of his Department's determination of the number of veterans in jails in England and Wales. (319840)

The methodology used by Defence Analytical Services and Advice (DASA) to estimate the proportion of armed forces veterans in prison was published on the DASA website:

http://www.dasa.mod.uk/applications/newWeb/www/index.php?page=48&pubType=3&thiscontent=540&PublishTime =16:00:00&date=2010-01-25&disText=Single %20Report&from=listing&topDate=2010-01-25

on 25 January 2010.

The report describes in some length and detail who was contained in databases held by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the variables used in the matching process and the advantages and disadvantages of the approach taken.

As date of birth was a required variable only those records that contained a date of birth were used. This amounted to around 81,000 valid records from the prison database and around 1.3 million valid records from the MOD database.

The date of the prison population extract taken to inform the matching work was 6 November 2009. If a person sent to prison before 1979 was still in prison on this date then their record would have been used in the matching process.

Reservists were not included in the matching process.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) whether people (a) whose first name was unavailable, (b) under the age of 18 years, (c) who had changed their names on marriage and (d) known to use aliases were counted for the purposes of his Department's determination of the number of service veterans in prison; (319555)

The methodology used by Defence Analytical Services and Advice (DASA) to estimate the proportion of Armed Forces veterans in prison was published on the DASA website

http://www.dasa.mod.uk/applications/newWeb/www/index.php?page=48&pubType=3&thiscontent=540&Publish Time=16:00:00&date=2010-01-25&disText=Single %20Report&from=listing&topDate=2010-01-25

on 25 January 2010.

The report describes in some length and detail who was contained in databases held by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the variables used in the matching process and the advantages and disadvantages of the approach taken.

The date of the prison population extract taken to inform this work was 6 November 2009. The total number of people in prison in England and Wales was 84,522. However, as only sentenced and remand prisoners aged 18 and over were matched, the denominator used was 81,071. Non criminal prisoners and those aged under 18 were excluded from the matching process.

No estimate of veterans in individual prisons has been made because this was outside the scope of the project.

The MoD and MoJ are currently working to estimate the proportion of armed forces veterans under the supervision of the Probation Service. Results will be published when complete.