Ministry of Justice written question – answered at on 6 April 2016.
Lord Ahmed
Non-affiliated
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the current total number of prisoners in HM Prison Service; and how that number is broken down by faith category.
Lord Faulks
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice
Religion is self-declared and prisoners are under no obligation to declare their religion. Statistics on the prison population by religion in England and Wales are published quarterly and the latest available information can be found within table 1.5 of the ‘Offender Management Statistics Quarterly, Prison Population 31 December 2015’. The latest information is provided below.
Table 1: Prison population by religion, as at 31 December 2015, England and Wales | |||||||
| Total | ||||||
Males and females | 84,968 | ||||||
| |||||||
All Christian | 42,063 | ||||||
Anglican | 15,835 | ||||||
848 | |||||||
15,197 | |||||||
10,183 | |||||||
Muslim | 12,328 | ||||||
Hindu | 438 | ||||||
Sikh | 705 | ||||||
Buddhist | 1,543 | ||||||
Jewish | 398 | ||||||
Other religious group(1) | 1,383 | ||||||
Non recognised | 11 | ||||||
No religion | 26,007 | ||||||
Not recorded | 92 | ||||||
(1) On 30 June 2015, 350 prisoners who were previously recorded in the other religious group will now be included in the other Christian category. More detailed information on religion in prison population data and improvement of classifications has allowed the identification of these prisoners. | |||||||
Data Source and Quality | |||||||
These figures have been drawn from IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. | |||||||
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