The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many of (a) all people in prison and (b) all people in prison who self-identified as Muslims on 1 January 2014 had (i) no previous custodial sentences, (ii) one previous custodial sentence, (iii) between two and five previous custodial sentences, (iv) between six and 10 previous custodial sentences and (v) over 10 previous custodial sentences.
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 31st 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.