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Prisoners: Crimes of Violence

Answer

Open units within closed prisons are a cost-effective means of providing regional resettlement opportunities for prisoners who are deemed suitable for such accommodation following a risk-assessment. Progression to open prisons or to open units within closed prisons is never automatic and prisoners must generally be within two years of release before they can be considered for allocation. Only those prisoners who are assessed having a low risk of escape or abscond and risk of harm to the public a will be allocated to open prison conditions.

The number of prisoners convicted of offences within the category of ‘violence against the person’ and who are held in open wings of closed prisons is set out in Table 1 below.

Table 1: The number of sentenced prisoners held in open wings of closed prisons for Violence against the person offences by detailed offence as at 31 March 2016 in England and Wales
	Numbers at 31 March 2016
Violence against the person - Total	62
Homicide
Murder	20
Manslaughter and corporate manslaughter	3
Violence with injury
Attempted murder	3
Causing death or serious injury by dangerous driving	4
Causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving	*
Assault with intent to cause serious harm	21
Endangering life	*
Assault with injury	4
Violence without injury
Threats to kill	*
Kidnapping	*
Other violence against the person offences	*
Data sources and quality
The figures in these tables 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.
An asterisk (*) has been used to suppress values of two or fewer. This is to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Includes only prisoners held within open units which are part of a closed prison. Excludes prisoners held in dedicated open prisons or dedicated open prisons which are managed as part of a wider cluster of prisons.
Source: Ministry of Justice (JSAS/PQ 36181)

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

36181

Session

2015-16

Subjects

Crimes of violence Prisoners

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk