Written question asked by John Austin (Labour) on Tuesday, 25 July 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 9 October 2006. It was answered by Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour) on Monday, 9 October 2006 on behalf of the Home Office.

Prisons

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people are on licence from prisons in England and Wales.

Answer: At 31 December 2005 there were 25,271 people being supervised on licence by the probation service following their release from prison.These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system, and although shown to the last individual, the figures may not be accurate to that level.

Secondary information