Offenders: Databases

John McDonnell
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many individual offender records of individuals in prison or on probation were held on electronic databases in each of the last six years.

Mr. Hanson
All offenders in prison or under probation service supervision will be recorded on prison and probation administrative IT systems. The table shows (a) the prison population as at 30 June each year and (b) the number of offenders under probation service supervision in the community as at 31 December each year in England and Wales 2002-07:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|    |Prison population|Court orders|Persons supervised under post-release|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2002|71,218           |116,125     |22,000                               |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2003|73,657           |120,734     |21,106                               |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2004|74,488           |128,217     |22,739                               |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2005|76,190           |137,377     |25,603                               |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2006|77,982           |146,532     |26,096                               |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2007|79,734           |149,045     |26,763                               |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording systems, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.