Category: Speeches

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the nationality was of (a) all people in prison and (b) people in prison who self-identified as Muslim on 1 January 2014.

Jeremy Wright

Data are held centrally on the prison population in England and Wales on the last day of each month, so figures have been provided for 31^st December 2013 (with the exception of PQ 197068 which has been answered as at 30 June 2013 – the latest available data for criminal history information).

For PQ 197067, Table 1 below provides the number for the sentenced prison population by sentence length for self-declared Muslim prisoners and the total for all religions.

For PQ 197068, Table 2 provides the number of offenders in prison on 30th June 2013 who identified themselves as Muslim and all other religions by the number of previous custodial sentences received.

For PQ 197069, Table 3 provides the prison population by nationality for self-declared Muslims and the total for all other religions.

For PQ 197090, Table 4 provides the prison population by age group for self-declared Muslims and the total for all other religions.

Please note that the religion of prisoners is self declared and prisoners are under no obligation to declare their religion.

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.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many prisoners reached (a) Key Stage 1, (b) Key Stage 2 and (c) Key Stage 3 qualifications in (i) English and (ii) mathematics whilst in prison in each of the last five years.

Matthew Hancock

We do not centrally hold information on prior attainment.

Work is under way to introduce, this summer, mandatory education assessment by the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) provider for all newly-received prisoners. This will ensure that all offenders, not just those that go on to learning, receive a learning assessment (focused around English and maths, but also covering learning difficulties and disabilities).

Table 1 shows Offender Learner English and Maths Achievements for the 2012/13 academic year. The data are broken down by Level rather than Key Stage as this is the appropriate measure for further education qualifications.

Table 1: Offender Learners – English and Maths Achievements by level, 2012/13

Level	English	Maths
Entry level	5,100	5,250
Level 1	3,550	4,020
Level 2	1,280	1,930
Total	9,300	10,100

Notes

1) The data source is the Individualised Learner Record.

2) Volumes are rounded to the nearest ten except for the Grand Totals which are rounded to the nearest hundred.

3) Learners undertaking courses at more than one level will be counted once for each applicable level, but once only in the Total.

4) Offender learners are defined as offenders aged 18 or over that participated in Skills Funding Agency funded learning while in the prison system. These offenders were funded via the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) budget.

Information on Offender Learner English and maths achievements by level for 2010/11 and 2011/12 is published as a Supplementary Table to a Statistical First Release. Data for earlier years are not available on a comparable basis.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/284253/January2013_OLASS_Participation_Achievement.xls

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-further-education-and-skills

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