Figures for the prison population in England and Wales published weekly. For more detailed figures on the prison population see the National Statistics publication, Offender Management Statistics Quarterly bulletin.

This publication contains figures on the Scottish prison population, including daily average population by type of custody and establishment, characteristics of prisoners and receptions to/liberations from penal establishments. It also contains analysis of recent trends in the prison population plus projections for the next 10 financial years. Source agency: Scottish Government Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Prison Statistics and Prison Population Projections, Scotland

The prisoner dataset extracts from the Prison National Offender Management Information System (p-NOMIS) and the Offender Assessment System (OASys), operational databases used in prisons for the management of offenders.

The Research Accreditation Panel provides oversight of the framework that is used to accredit research projects, researchers and processing environments under the Digital Economy Act 2017 (DEA). Researchers are advised to liaise with SAIL support teams to understand the requirements and timelines involved with submitting a research project to the Research Accreditation Panel. https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/digitaleconomyact-research-statistics/research-accreditation-panel/

Weekly report on the total population in prison and useable operational capacity of prisons. Source agency: Justice Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Prison population and accommodation weekly bulletin

In order to develop a better understanding of the factors that influence whether a male prisoner's family stays involved in his life during incarceration, researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with inmates from two New Jersey prisons and their family members between May 2005 and July 2006. A total of 35 (25 from one prison and 10 from the other) inmates and 15 family members were interviewed, comprising 13 inmate and family dyads, 1 inmate and family triad, and an additional 21 inmate interviews. The data include variables that explore the family's relationship with the incarcerated individual in the following areas: the inmate's relationship with the family prior to the incarceration, the strain (emotional, economic, stigma) that the incarceration has placed on the family, the economic resources available to the family to maintain the inmate, the family's social support system, and the inmate's efforts to improve or rehabilitate himself while incarcerated.

From the Police National Computer. First published from PNC in 2005; latest publication in July 2009.

Analysis of the risk of suicide and drug-related deaths among prisoners, including the number of deaths, standarised mortality ratios and age-standardised rates, England and Wales, 2008 to 2019.

Weekly report on the total population in prison and useable operational capacity of prisons. Published on the HMPS website. Source agency: Justice Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Prison Accomodation

The Northern Ireland Prison Population Bulletin is a National Statistical annual publication. It details key statistics relating to the average daily prison population levels and receptions for Northern Ireland, and includes data by prison establishment, custody type, gender, age, sentence length and principal offence categories.

This publication provides key statistics relating to offenders who are in custody or under Probation Service supervision. It covers flows into these services (receptions into prison or probation starts) and flows out (discharges from prison or probation termination) as well as the caseload of both services at specific points in time. The publication also includes information on returns to custody following recall.

Statistical bulletin giving information on prisoner population, liberations and receptions in the financial year.

Source agency: Scottish Government

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Prison Statistics, Scotland

This dataset provides quarterly aggregated data on overall volume and claim expenditure on the legal aid schemes administered by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) for England and Wales. The reports include statistics on Criminal legal aid covering Police stations, magistrates' courts, Prison Law and the Crown Courts alongside Civil Legal Aid covering Legal Help, family mediation, Civil Representation and exceptional case funding). On an annual cycle further datasets released include Client and provider characteristics, Criminal central funds and higher courts, Appeals and Provider based volume and expenditure figures with geography. All datasets are designed to monitor the workload and expenditure of the legal aid system with further more detailed available than provided in accompanying tables.

The HMIP (His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons) Prisoner Surveys (also formerly known as Detainee Surveys) are part of the Inspectorate's duties to inspect prisons. Surveys of prisoners have been carried out systematically since 2000 at institutions being inspected, to gain important insight into detainees' experiences of offender management whilst in custody.

Prisoners are issued with the survey questionnaire to return to the HMIP team, which processes the data to inform inspections of individual institutions and the HMIP annual reports.

The survey is grouped into topics/themes of questions with response categories, as well as providing space for prisoners to add additional comments (such text comments are not included in these datasets).

The specific objectives of the HMIP Prisoner Survey series are as follows:

• to produce data that are comparable as possible over time and between custodial institutions;
• to provide data for a large and representative sample of adult prisoners in England and Wales. So far, over 20 years' worth of data has been collected. The survey conducted in 2020/21 was subject to HMIP COVID-19 restrictions.

Further information can be found on the HMIP Prisoner Survey webpage.

End User Licence and Special Licence versions

Two versions of the HMIP Prisoner Survey are held at UKDS: an End User Licence (EUL) version (SN 9161) that is subject to registration and standard access conditions, and a more detailed Special Licence (SL) version (SN 9068), which has additional access restrictions. The document 'end_user_licence_group_changes', available with the EUL version, SN 9161, details the differences between the two versions. Users should obtain the EUL version first to see whether it is suitable for their needs before considering making an application for access to the SL version.

Latest edition information

For the third edition (August 2025), data and documentation for 2024/25 were added to the study.

This international, interdisciplinary project provides new perspectives on the experience of prison for a range of end users. Using innovative mixed methods its aim is to critically analyze current developments in penal architecture, the design of carceral spaces and the impact of advanced technologies of communication, surveillance and monitoring of movement, with a view to providing a theoretically informed, empirically grounded and comparative account of prison architecture, design and technology (ADT) and their effects on prisoners, staff and prison visitors. Tracing the commission, design and construction of two UK prisons, the project explores: (i) the intentions behind the architecture, design and technologies of spatial management and control that characterize the recent penal estate, paying attention to external and internal spaces, and incorporating consideration of the introduction of Building Information Modelling (BIM) to the UK custodial sector; (ii) the impacts of the architecture, design and technologies of spatial management and control that characterize both the recent UK and northwest European penal estate.This research investigates developments in the design of prisons, exploring the propositions that punishment is manifested architecturally, that 'good' prison design need not cost any more than 'bad' design, that architecture, design and technology (ADT) may impact on prisoners' emotional and psychological reactions to incarceration, including their behaviour, their willingness to engage with regimes and their capacity to build positive relations with other prisoners and staff, and that ADT may significantly influence prisoners' prospects of rehabilitation and reintegration into society on release. One 'lifer' notes that many of the crises facing penal systems in the developed world (including overcrowding, violence, mental and physical illness, drug use, high levels of suicide, self-harm etc.) are intrinsically related to the 'fear-suffused environments' created by prison architects (Hassine, 2008: 8). This research critically interrogates this statement. Against that backdrop, a few new penal experiments in parts of northern and western Europe might be welcomed as 'humane' alternatives to the traditional architecture of incarceration. Equipped with state-of-the-art lighting imitating natural daylight, extensive use of glass, no bars on windows, different colour palettes creating varied atmospheres in each 'zone', displays of artwork, curved lines, rounded walls and uneven horizons, the design features being incorporated into some new prisons might be assumed to mitigate against the harms caused by imprisonment. But can aesthetic considerations make a difference to behaviour? If, as 19th century prison commissioners and designers believed, architecture can be used as a means of inflicting punishment, is it equally true that architecture can deliver rehabilitation? Should the briefs issued to those who design and plan new prisons include a requirement to build into their construction features that normalize carceral space and have potential to ease offenders' reintegration back into society? Or is it simply that 'a prison is a prison', regardless of the enlightened humanism that may underpin its design? Could it even be that these prisons have unintended outcomes and perverse consequences, or represent an extension of power and control orientated towards docile compliance and bring their own distinctive pains of imprisonment? Moreover, if the general public are as punitive in their attitudes to offenders, as is commonly thought, how do communities feel when prisons are built in their midst? How do architects of prisons balance the requirements that prisons should pass the 'public acceptability' test (which may include an expectation that they should 'look' and 'feel' like places of punishment) with the 'NIMBYism' which frequently greets the announcement of a new prison? This project will empirically investigate these issues and inform future debates about how prisons might be designed differently in order to fulfill the goal of rehabilitation as well as those of security, deterrence, retribution and punishment. Challenging conventional wisdom and taken-for-granted assumptions concerning the purposes and 'effectiveness' of prisons, the proposed project is innovative, significant and timely. No research currently exists on the impact and effects - on prison staff as well as on inmates - of penal architecture, spatial design and the implementation of advanced monitoring, surveillance and communication technologies. The study's intent is to move beyond the traditional, historical focus on penal architecture e.g. the legacy of Bentham's Panopticon and the 19th century 'separate' and 'silent' systems (in which the goals of discipline and reform were built in to the fabric of the carceral environment), and to inform knowledge and debates from a contemporary and future-oriented perspective. In doing this, the proposed project promises to deliver significant advances on previous research and extant knowledge. Interviews with male and female prisoners (semi-structured; walked interviews); interviews with prison staff (semi-structured; walked); focus groups; surveys; photo project.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. This is a qualitative data collection. The project examined individual and collective identities in prisons. In particular, it focused on how ethnic and masculine identities have a bearing on prisoners' social relationships. The study had three main aims:to examine the role of ethnic identities in shaping social relationships in prison, and compare this with relations in prisoners' home communitiesto determine how different racialised masculine identities are expressed in terms of, for example, ethnicity, religion, age, nationality and regionalityto assess the influence of institutional practices on individuals and group identities, the extent and nature of prisoner solidarity, and provide evidence of social hierarchies and gang membership that are influenced by identityThe project comprised two ethnographic studies conducted in Kent, at a male young offenders' institution (Her Majesty's Young Offenders' Institution (HMYOI) Rochester) and an adult male prison (Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) Maidstone). Two main research methods were used: interaction and observation of prison life over an eight-month period; and semi-structured interviews with 60 young adult prisoners and 50 adult prisoners. Activities at the two research sites were as follows: at HMP Maidstone, which is a Category C prison for adult men, the researchers observed prisoner social relations through informal interactions with prisoners on the wings, interacting with them at work, in classes, during association, exercise, worship and visiting times. Fifty prisoners agreed to be interviewed, and five also took part in a focus group interviewAt HMYOI Rochester, a prison for young men aged 18-21 years, the researchers observed prisoner social relations through informal interactions with prisoners on the wings, interacting with them at work, in classes, during associations, exercise, worship, and visiting times. Sixty prisoners at Rochester agreed to be interviewed.This collection comprises 111 interview transcripts. Users should note that access to these data requires express permission of the depositor. Further information may be found on the Ethnicity, Identity, and Social Relations in Prison ESRC project award web page, and on the Identities and Social Action research programme web site. Main Topics: Topics covered in the interviews include background and family circumstances, educational and employment history, social networks and friendships, significant personal relationships, strategies for coping with life while in prison, interaction with other prisoners, and observations on social structures and networks based around ethnicity/religion in prison. One-stage stratified or systematic random sample

This data collection provides annual data on prisoners under a sentence of death and prisoners whose offense sentences were commuted or vacated during the period 1973-2009. Information is supplied for basic sociodemographic characteristics such as age, sex, education, and state of incarceration. Criminal history data include prior felony convictions for criminal homicide and legal status at the time of the capital offense. Additional information is available for inmates removed from death row by year-end 2009 and for inmates who were executed.

The Prison Performance Digest presents a breakdown by individual establishment of performance over the past 15 years, up to and including 2009/10, against a number of indicators (KPI and non-KPI). Source agency: Justice Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: The Prison Performance Digest

UK armed forces veterans who had ever been convicted and who were serving a prison sentence, by personal and service-related characteristics, unweighted estimates, taken from the Veterans’ Survey 2022, UK.