To ask Her Majesty's Government what were the total caseloads of the Probation Service in England and Wales on (a) 31 December 1997, and (b) 31 December 2008. [HL5292]

To ask Her Majesty's Government what are the projected caseloads of the Probation Service in England and Wales on (a) 31 December 2009, and (b) 31 December 2010. [HL5293]

The number of persons under Probation Service supervision in England and Wales as at 31 December 1997 and 2008 were 184,627 and 243,434 respectively.

Revised methods for projecting community sentence and post-custody licence starts are being developed. Projections of probation workload are not currently available.

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.