Written question asked by Gordon Prentice (Labour) on Tuesday, 16 March 2010, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 18 March 2010. It was answered by Claire Ward (Labour) on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.

Prison Sentences

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many and what proportion of prisoners in England and Wales are serving sentences following conviction for offences related to (a) fraud, (b) other financial sector crime and (c) other white collar crime.

Answer: At the end of June 2009, the latest date for which figures are available, there were 1,875, or 3 per cent. out of a total of 68,375 prisoners serving sentences for fraud and forgery in all prison establishments in England and Wales.While statistics are held on the numbers prisoners serving sentences for fraud and forgery, they cannot be broken down further to show which of these convictions specifically related to the commission of financial sector or "other white collar" crime.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