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Prisoners

Answer

The following table gives the numbers of foreign national prisoners received into all prison establishments in England and Wales under immediate custodial sentence between 1997 and 2006 showing their proportion against all receptions:

Immediate custodial sentenced receptions into prison establishments in England and Wales by nationality 1997-2006
	All nationalities	British nationals	Foreign nationals	Unrecorded nationality	Foreign national receptions (percentage)
1997	80,832	76,321	4,167	344	5.2
1998	85,908	80,772	4,895	241	5.7
1999	90,238	85,126	4,927	185	5.5
2000	91,195	85,712	5,237	246	5.7
2001	90,523	84,217	6,026	280	6.7
2002	93,615	86,114	7,018	483	7.5
2003	92,245	84,251	7,482	512	8.1
2004	93,326	84,579	8,355	392	9.0
2005	90,414	80,418	9,612	384	10.6
2006	88,134	77,975	9,832	327	11.2

This information is derived from table 7.5 of the supplementary tables of the recently published Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2006, a copy of which will be placed in the House of Commons Library and which is available at the following website:"http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/prisonaandpobation.htm"The following table gives the numbers of sentenced foreign national prisoners held in all prisons in England and Wales over the same period, ie the population by category at each year specified:

Sentenced population in prison establishments in England and Wales by whether foreign national 1997-2006 (as at June each year)
	All	British	Foreign nationals	Foreign national sentenced population (percentage)
1997	48,674	45,311	3,250	6.7
1998	52,159	48,442	3,546	6.8
1999	51,293	47,377	3,862	7.5
2000	53,093	49,059	3,918	7.4
2001	54,169	49,471	4,576	8.4
2002	57,272	51,471	5,607	9.8
2003	58,190	51,791	6,168	10.6
2004	60,924	54,453	6,256	10.3
2005	62,179	55,497	6,509	10.5
2006	63,404	55,956	7,283	11.5

Comparable information for Scotland and Northern Ireland is the responsibility of the Scottish Executive and the Northern Ireland Prison Service.This information is derived from tables 6.4 and 6.5 in Prison Statistics in England and Wales for years 1997-2002 and from table 8.29 in the Offender Management Caseload Statistics for the years 2003-06. Website versions of these tables can be found at:"http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/omcs/html"for years up to 2005 and at"http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/prisonandprobation.htm"for 2006. Paper copies of these publications can be found in the House of Commons Library.Information relating to immigration status is not centrally available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.There are no separate estimates of the cost of detaining prisoners according to whether UK or foreign national. The average cost per prisoner in 2006-07 was approximately £37,500, taking account of all establishment types.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.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

470 c1210-1W; 177457

Session

2007-08

Subjects

Foreign nationals Prisoners

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk