asked Her Majesty's Government:

By how much the prison population in England and Wales has increased during the past decade; and what are the causes of the increase. [HL4399]

The information requested is published in the annual volume Offender Management Caseload Statistics and monthly Population in Custody, copies of which are available via the Library of the House and from the Ministry of Justice website at www.justice.gov.uk/publications/statistics.htm.

At the end of June 1997, the total prison population in England and Wales, including in police cells, was 61,467, and at the end of June 2007 the corresponding figure was 80,205, an increase of 18,738.

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.

An account of the drivers of the prison population can be found in the report by Lord Carter of Coles, Securing the future: Proposals for the efficient and sustainable use of custody in England and Wales, published in December 2007, a copy of which is available from the Library of the House and from the department's website at www.justice.gov.uk/publications/securing-the-future.htm.

Lord Carter's report commented that:

“The increased prison population of the past decade is a result of a concerted and successful effort to catch, convict and detain for longer periods the most dangerous and serious offenders ... There are a number of factors behind the increase in the prison population in England and Wales since 1995. They include both legislative and non-legislative elements which, in some cases, overlap with each other. The drivers include, but are not limited to, the following:

changes in public attitudes and the political climate;

changes to legislation and the sentencing framework;

more offenders brought to justice, increased custody rates and longer sentence lengths;

greater focus on enforcement of sentences; and

greater awareness of risk, and greater political prominence of public protection”.

The key recommendations of this report are:

a significant expansion of the current prison-building programme should begin immediately so that up to 6,500 additional new places, on top of the significant expansion already planned, can be provided by the end of 2012;

larger, state-of-the-art prisons should be planned and developed now so that from 2012 there can be approximately 5,000 new places that will allow for a programme of closures of old, inefficient and ineffective prisons offering better value for money and much improved chances of reducing re-offending and crime;

a structured sentencing framework and permanent sentencing commission should be developed, with judicial leadership, to improve the transparency, predictability and consistency of sentencing and the criminal justice system; and

there are grounds for a more efficient approach to the way operations and headquarters’ overheads are structured and managed.

On 5 December 2007 (col. 1703) I repeated a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice on the report on the prisons review carried out by Lord Carter.

Further information can be found in the department's analysis, Story of the Prison Population: 1997-2007, a copy of which can be found in the House of Commons Library (Reference: Dep 2008-0362). It is also available online at: www.parliament.uk/deposits/depositedpapers /2008/DEP2008-0362.pdf.