Prisoners: Wales
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether her Department holds data on the number of Welsh people in the prison system.
Answered by Sir Nicholas Dakin
HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) cannot identify Welsh prisoners because English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish nationalities are not captured separately on the central data system. UK nationals are all recorded as British.
HMPPS can provide data on prisoners with an address in Wales, broken down by sex, ethnicity, offence type, sentence type and local authority. We do not hold data on offenders’ socio-economic background.
Around 97% of prisoners have addresses that are recorded on the central data system. If no address is given, an offender’s committal court address is used as a proxy for residence. Prisoners with no recorded origin are typically foreign nationals, or those recently received into custody where no address has yet been assigned.
It is important to note that someone with an address, for example in London, may consider themselves to be Welsh, while someone with an address in Wales may not. It is not possible to infer from an address in Wales that an individual considers themselves to be Welsh.
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