Justice written question – answered at on 19 July 2011.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many foreign national prisoners convicted of murder are (a) currently serving a custodial sentence and (b) have been released from custody in each of the last 10 years; and how many of those released from custody (i) are still residing in the UK, (ii) have returned to their country of origin and (iii) have unknown residential status.
The following table shows numbers of foreign national prisoners in England and Wales serving a custodial sentence for murder during each of the last 10 years:
Number of prisoners | |
June 2002 | 308 |
June 2003 | 321 |
June 2004 | 337 |
June 2005 | 371 |
June 2006 | 392 |
June 2007 | 427 |
June 2008 | 469 |
June 2009 | 514 |
June 2010(1) | 526 |
March 2011 | 573 |
(1) Due to the introduction of a new prison IT system, from 2010 on the prison population data is taken from a different source. Note: Excludes recalls |
In 2010, the Parole Board directed the release of seven foreign national prisoners serving a life sentence for murder. Of these, one has been returned to custody, two are residing in the UK and being supervised on life licence by the probation service, and four have been deported. As with any other life sentence prisoner, a foreign national prisoner serving a life sentence for murder is eligible for release on parole only once he has completed the minimum period of imprisonment specified by the court and only where the Parole Board determines that it is no longer necessary, on the grounds of public protection, for him to be detained in custody.
Detailed data before 2010 are not held centrally in an electronic format. A manual trawl of prisoner files would be required to obtain these data; this would incur disproportionate cost.
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.
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No0 people think not
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