England and Wales –
Western Europe’s Jail Capital

England and Wales is the prison capital of the European Union for the second year running, with a record average incarceration rate of 141, per 100,000 of the population, according to official Home Office figures.

The figures, published in the world prison population list, show that England and Wales is even outstripping the imprisonment rate of Libya, Burma, Malaysia and Turkey.

The statistics confirm that our courts are far more punitive than our closest European neighbours. France jails 93 for every 100,000, and Germany jails 98 per 100,000.

The imprisonment rate for England and Wales is significantly higher than it was five years ago when it stood at 125 per 100,000. This is due to an increased severity in sentencing. The courts are sending more people to prison and for longer.

* A first time domestic burglar is nearly twice as likely to go to prison today as eight years ago. The average sentence length for all burglars has increased from 16 to 25 months.

* First time offenders are more likely to be sent to prison than previously. Of the increase in the total number of people sent to prison in the last eight years more than half of them have no previous convictions.

* Sentence severity has increased significantly for women. Women convicted of theft or handling at the Crown Court are now twice as likely to go to prison as in 1991. At the magistrates' courts the chances of a woman receiving a custodial sentence has risen seven-fold.

Despite the increased severity in sentencing, re-offending rates remain high. Six out ten prisoners and three quarters of young offenders return to a life of crime within two years of leaving jail.  Seven out of ten burglars will commit further crimes and eight out ten shoplifters.

Speaking today the director of the Prison Reform Trust, Juliet Lyon, said:

“Holding the Western European record for jailing people is nothing to be proud of, particularly since most return to crime on release. Our prisons have become social dustbins and the only way to kick this costly habit is to invest in effective drug treatment, mental health care and community sentences.”

Notes to Editors:

1. The World Prison Population is available at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r234.pdf

2. On 30 January 2004 the prison population in England and Wales stood at 73,688 an increase of 2,729  in the past year .

3. The number of prisoners in England and Wales has increased by 25,000 in the last ten years.  In 1994, the average prison population was 48,631.  When Labour came to Government in May 1997, the prison population was 60,131.  Previously it took four decades (1954-1994) for the prison population to rise by 25,000.

4. The number of women in prison has increased particularly dramatically.  Ten years ago in 1994 the average female prison population was 1,811.  Five years ago in 1999 it stood at 3,247. On 16 January 2004, there were 4,307  women in prison, an increase of 140 per cent in the last ten years.

5. The number of life sentence prisoners has increased considerably in recent years.  There were 5,445 prisoners serving life sentences on 31 October 2003.  This compares with fewer than 4,000 in 1998 and 3,000 in 1992. England and Wales has more life sentence prisoners than all of the member states of the European Union combined and has the highest number in the whole of Europe. 

6. The number of prisoners serving short sentences has also increased. Between 1992 and 2002 the number of adults sent to prison for sentences of  less than 12 months, more than doubled from 18,500 to nearly 48,000. In 2002 more than half of all those sent to prison were there for jail terms of six months or less.

7. Over the last year prison overcrowding has been at its highest recorded level. At the end of December, 81 of the 138 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded.

8. On 15 July 2003 over 16,000 prisoners were doubling up in cells designed for one. (Home Affairs Select Committee oral hearing, 15 July 2003)

9. Home Office projections over the next three years reveal that there is a huge gap between planned useable operational capacity and the forecast prison population.

Planned average uncrowded capacity
Currently planned average useable operational capacity
Forecast average population
2007
70,400
78,700
88,700
2006
69,500
78,750
87,200
2005
69,000
78,200
81,500
2004
67,000
75,800
76,200

10. By the end of the decade Home Office projections predict a prison population of anything between 91,400 and 109,600.

11. Since 1995, over 15,200 additional prison places have been provided at a cost of more than £2 billion (Hansard, written parliamentary answers Sept 2003).

12. Research by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit highlighted in the Carter report (‘Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime’, December 2003) says that a 22 per cent increase in the prison population since 1997 is estimated to have reduced crime by around five per cent during a period when overall crime fell by 30 per cent. The report states: ‘There is no convincing evidence that further increases in the use of custody would significantly reduce crime’.
 
13. The Social Exclusion Unit has reported to the Prime Minister that re-offending by ex-prisoners costs £11 billion pounds per year (SEU, ‘Reducing re-offending by ex-prisoners’, 2002)