The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-06-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many successful matches there have been between DNA profiles taken from crime scenes and those stored on the National DNA Database in each of the last two years.
Karen Bradley
The requested data are as follows:
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-06-26.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the ratio of prison officers to inmates in prisons in England and Wales was, by category of prison, in each of the last five years.
Andrew Selous
Staffing levels are being reviewed prison by prison as part of a ‘benchmarking approach’. Benchmarking has been agreed with the unions and the NAO has commented that the wider strategy for the prison estate is the most coherent and comprehensive for many years. It delivers efficiencies while ensuring that public sector prisons operate safely, decently and securely. Benchmarking optimises the skills of staff by introducing new ways of working and puts all prison officers in prisoner facing roles.
The information requested has been placed in the library and extends the table provided to the honourable member for Tooting on 4 Mar 2014, Official Report, 805W. The tables include both public and private sector establishments. Figures are not however comparable across public and private sector establishments. There is no comparison within Private Sector Prisons for Prison Officer Specialists. Functions carried out by badged officers vary, particularly across private prisons, relating to whether functions are civilianised, contracted out, or performed by badged officers.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2015-01-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 25 November 2014 to Question 214859, how many foreign national prisoners from each country were convicted of each offence in the violence offence group from April 2013 to March 2014.
Andrew Selous
International prisoner transfer arrangements may enable non-nationals to apply to transfer to their state of normal residence or to the state to which they have close ties. There is no requirement on a state to accept the transfer of a non-national resident. Since 2010, no such transfers have taken place to England and Wales. Prisoner transfer is a devolved matter and is the responsibility of the relevant Minister in Scotland and in Northern Ireland.
The numbers of foreign national prisoners from each country convicted of each offence in the violence offence group from April 2013 to March 2014 are in the attached table 1.
The numbers of foreign national prisoners from each country, convicted of each offence type from 1 October 2013 to 31 March 2014 are at the attached table 2. Prison receptions data for April to June 2014 is not available by offence group due to problems with data quality. Figures for this period will be published in due course subject to the result of ongoing investigations. Prison receptions data for July to September 2014 is currently not available and is due to be published on 29 January 2015.
The number of foreign national offenders in our prisons has reduced since 2010, compared to that number doubling between 1997 – 2010.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2015-09-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 26 June 2015 to Question 2761, if he will place in the Library a copy of the grant application received by his Department from Action on Smoking and Health.
Jane Ellison
The Department has received a request for grant funding from Action on Smoking and Health for the 2015-16 financial year. This proposal is currently under assessment and a decision on funding has not yet been made.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-03-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what data his Department collects on the number of men and women in prison who have previously been in local authority care.
Jeremy Wright
Prisoners are assessed on entry to prison for addiction problems and there is a package of support available to them. The MoJ’s Transforming Rehabilitation programme will provide individual support to all released prisoners. This will include identifying risks and needs for individual ex-prisoners, and providing services to address them.
The Ministry of Justice does not collect these data centrally on a regular basis. However, a survey of 1,435 adult prisoners sentenced to between one month and four years in 2005 and 2006 (Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction – SPCR) provides self-reported estimates for each question.
The full reports can be accessed on the gov.uk website: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/surveying-prisoner-crime-reduction-spcr
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-04-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average custodial sentence was for people of each gender sentenced in the West Yorkshire Police Force area to immediate custody for (a) summary only offences, (b) either way offences and (c) indictable only offences; and for which offences such people were sentenced.
Jeremy Wright
The sentencing framework and sentencing guidelines apply equally to all offenders. Sentencing is entirely a matter for the courts, taking account of all the circumstances of each case. This will include all aggravating and mitigating factors, the criminal history of the offender and a guilty plea.
Defendants are now more likely to be convicted for committing crime and sent to prison for longer than they were a decade ago. In addition criminals convicted since 2010 are more likely to receive an immediate custodial sentence, both overall and for a first time offence.
Offenders sentenced at all courts, by gender, class type, offence type in West Yorkshire police force area from 2008 to 2012 (latest available) can be viewed in the table. In many cases the numbers are too small for the average custodial sentence length to be meaningful.
Court proceedings data for 2013 are planned for publication in May 2014.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-03-31.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what offences were committed by prisoners serving their sentences in open prisons.
Jeremy Wright
Open prisons have been used since 1936, because they are the most effective means of ensuring that prisoners are suitably risk-assessed before they are released into the community under appropriate licence conditions. These prisons also provide effective supervision for prisoners who do not require the security conditions of the closed estate, because they have been assessed as having a low risk of harm to the public and a low risk of absconding by the independent Parole Board and/or NOMS.
Indeterminate sentence prisoners located in open conditions have been rigorously risk assessed and categorised as being of a low enough risk to the public to warrant their placement in an open prison. They will have previously spent time in prisons with higher levels of security, before being transferred to open conditions if recommended by the Parole Board – or directed through NOMS.
The main purpose of open conditions is to test prisoners in conditions more similar to those that they will face in the community. Time spent in open prisons affords prisoners the opportunity to find work, re-establish family ties, reintegrate into the community and ensure housing needs are met. For many prisoners, in particular those, such as ISPs who have spent a considerable amount of time in custody; these are essential components for successful reintegration in the community and therefore an important factor in protecting the public. To release these prisoners directly from a closed prison without the resettlement benefits of the open estate would undoubtedly lead to higher levels of post-release re-offending. The reoffending rates for those released from open prisons are low when compared to all prisoners released from custody in England & Wales.
The requested information is provided in the table below.
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 Philip Davies on 2014-05-06.
To ask the Attorney General, how many (a) men and (b) women have been (i) investigated, (ii) given an administrative penalty, (iii) given a caution and (iv) convicted in court for benefit fraud since the prosecution of such cases was transferred to the Law Officers’ Department.
Oliver Heald
Allegations of benefit fraud are investigated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Administrative penalties are financial penalties, which can be offered as an alternative to prosecution, where there has been no previous fraud penalty of any form. These are issued by the DWP and Local Authorities. Cautions are issued by the Police.
The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) identify the number of offences in which a prosecution commenced and, reached a first hearing in magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of defendants prosecuted and convicted or their gender.
No central records of the prosecution outcomes of offences are held by the CPS. To obtain details of the number of people prosecuted for and convicted of offences of benefit fraud, which can be charged under various sections of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, Section 35 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 or the Fraud Act 2006, including their gender, would require a manual exercise of reviewing individual case files to be undertaken at a disproportionate cost.
Furthermore, cases of benefit fraud are also prosecuted by Local Authorities so any data the CPS can glean from a manual exercise would not provide a complete record.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-05-06.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been given more than one life sentence on separate sentencing occasions in the last 30 years; and for what offences each person received each such life sentence.
Jeremy Wright
A life sentence is mandatory for murder and discretionary life sentences are available for other very serious offences. This Government has introduced an automatic life sentence for a second very serious violent or sexual offence.
Under a life sentence, the court determines the minimum period to be served in prison for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. Once that period has been served it is for the Parole Board to determine if and when the offender may be released from prison on life licence and subject to recall for the rest of their life.
Table 1 shows the number of offenders who have been sentenced to life in the 12 months ending September 2013 who previously had one or more previous life sentence on a separate sentencing occasion within the last 30 years, in England and Wales. The table also shows details of their latest and previous offences for which they received a life sentence.
Reoffending rates for life sentenced prisoners are very low. A small number of life sentence prisoners commit offences in prison which result in a second life sentence. Some life sentence prisoners can also receive a second life sentence on conviction for offences committed prior to being imprisoned (e.g. a previous murder or rape).
The figures provided have been drawn from an extract of the Police National Computer (PNC) data held by the Department. The PNC holds details of all convictions and cautions given for recordable offences committed in England and Wales. In addition, as with any large scale recording system the PNC is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Detailed information on the length of time served by individual life sentence prisoners, and offence information is not readily available, so I will write to the Honourable Member.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-03-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders received a driving ban alongside a prison sentence of a longer length in each of the last five years.
Jeremy Wright
When the courts impose a driving ban and a custodial sentence at the same time, they already make some allowance for the length of time that the offender would normally serve in prison before becoming eligible for release, in order to ensure that disqualification has the desired impact. There are provisions in the Coroner’s and Justice Act 2009 which will give this statutory force. These will be commenced in due course.
We want to make sure that road traffic offenders face the full consequences of the punishment for their offence. When an offender commits a serious road traffic offence that attracts both a custodial sentence and disqualification from driving, it is essential for public confidence in the criminal justice system that the driving ban has full effect on the offender; he should not benefit from, in effect, a reduction in the length of the ban whilst he serves time in prison. These provisions will ensure that, as now, the court will determine the appropriate length of the ban for the purposes of the offence but it will then be required to extend the ban to take account of time to be spent in prison. This will ensure that there is consistency of action in every case and that driving bans bear equally on all offenders.
The Ministry of Justice Court Proceedings Database holds information on defendants proceeded against, found guilty and sentenced for criminal offences in England and Wales. This database holds information on offences provided by the statutes under which proceedings are brought but not the specific circumstances of each case. This centrally held information records the period of disqualification into one of thirteen bands. As the exact length of driving ban is not available, it is not possibly to identify how many offenders received a driving ban alongside a prison sentence of a longer length. This detailed information may be held on the court record but due to the size and complexity is not reported centrally to the MoJ. As such, the information requested can only be obtained at disproportionate cost.