Approximately ****** prisoners in England and Wales identified as being Christian in 2024, the most of any religious faith among prisoners. A further ****** identified as having no religion, while ****** identified as Muslims.
In 2024, there were 87,869 men and 3,635 women in prisons in England and Wales. Compared with the previous year, this represented an increase for both men and women. This represented a peak in the number of prisoners during this provided time period, and was also the peak for the United Kingdom as a whole.
Demographics of prisoners
There were 29,339 prisoners in their 30s in England and Wales in 2024, the most of any age group. In this year, there were also 3,354 prisoners who were aged between 15 and 20, with a further 21,381 prisoners who were in their 20s. In terms of the ethnicity of prisoners in England and Wales, 63,103 people in jail were White, 10,624 were Black, and 7,067were Asian. As of the same year, the most common religious faith of prisoners was Christianity, at 39,068 inmates, followed by 27,122 who identified as having no religion, with a further 15,909 who were Muslims.
Increase in prison officers since 2017
The 23,614 prison officers working in England and Wales in 2024 was almost as high as 2011 when there were 24,369 officers. From 2010 onwards, the number of prison officers fell from 24,830 to 18,251 by 2014, and stayed at comparably low levels until 2018. Low government expenditure on Prisons during the same time period suggests this was a result of the austerity policies implemented by the UK government at that time. The government has steadily increased spending on prisons since 2019/20, with spending on prisons reaching 6.09 billion in 2022/23. This has however not been enough to avert a possible overcrowding crisis in England and Wales, which had just 768 spare prison places in September 2023.
A revision was made on 20th January 2022 to add the volume of prisoners holding a Gender Recognition Certificate.
The Equality Act 2010 lists 9 Protected Characteristics:
This report focuses on those protected characteristics where data are collected, and are of sufficient quality for statistics to be meaningful. In general, this report is limited to analysis on sex, age, race (ethnicity) and religious belief for these reasons. Where data are available for other protected characteristics at sufficient quality and with sufficient coverage to be meaningful, they are also presented and considered.
The report presents some analysis by individual characteristic and is meant to serve as a guide for further research. In many cases, more than one factor (e.g. age and another protected characteristic, criminal history, socio-economic) may have an effect on an outcome.
The HMPPS Offender Equalities Report is produced and handled by the Ministry of Justice’s (MOJ) analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:
Monthly statistics on the population in custody of children and young people within secure children’s homes (SCH) / Oasis Restore Secure School (ORSS), secure training centres (STCs) and young offender institutions (YOIs).
This publication includes data on children and young people aged 10 to 18+ years in the children and young person secure estate.
Data are provided on a trend basis dating back to 2000 to 2001 and 2015 to 2016 onwards for more detailed data.
The publication contains more detailed information on the make-up of the custody population by ethnicity, sex, age, religious belief, legal basis, offence group, sector type, region of establishment, region of Youth Justice Service and distance from home.
The dataset provides detailed, standardised records of prisoners, including demographic, physical, and judicial information such as age, height, offence, birthplace, residence, occupation, religion, and literacy.
The dataset offers a comprehensive resource for studying social, economic, demographic, and anthropometric history of Ireland under British rule. Prisoners' names are anonymised to comply with data-sharing agreements. Recidivists are only included in this dataset the first time they are entered into the prison register.
Year of conviction ranges from 1858 to 1910, and the year of birth is from 1840 to 1859. The average age of the prison population is 34, and ages range from 16 to 70.
Data are described in more detail in E. McLaughlin, C. L. Colvin and M. Blum, 'Anthropometric History: Revisiting What’s in it for Ireland', Irish Economic and Social History (2021).
Occupations are classified into five categories using the Armstrong scale: W. A. Armstrong, ‘The use of information about occupation, part I: a basis for social stratification’, in E. A. Wrigley (ed.), Nineteenth-century society: essays in the use of quantitative methods for the study of social data (Cambridge, 1972).
Famine-era mortality is appended to this dataset, denoting excess mortality in a prisoner's county of birth during the Great Irish Famine. This is calculated by comparing the 1841 and 1851 censuses, as calculated by Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland starved (2nd ed., London, 1985).
The Equality Act 2010 lists 9 Protected Characteristics:
This report focuses on those protected characteristics where data are collected, and are of sufficient quality for statistics to be meaningful. In general, this report is limited to analysis on sex, age, race (ethnicity) and religious belief for these reasons. Where data are available for other protected characteristics at sufficient quality and with sufficient coverage to be meaningful, they are also presented and considered.
The report presents some analysis by individual characteristic and is meant to serve as a guide for further research. In many cases, more than one factor (e.g. age and another protected characteristic, criminal history, socio-economic) may have an effect on an outcome.
The HMPPS Annual Digest is produced and handled by the Ministry of Justice’s (MOJ) analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:
The Equality Act 2010 lists 9 Protected Characteristics:
This report focuses on those protected characteristics where data are collected, and are of sufficient quality for statistics to be meaningful. In general, this report is limited to analysis on sex, age, race (ethnicity) and religious belief for these reasons. Where data are available for other protected characteristics at sufficient quality and with sufficient coverage to be meaningful, they are also presented and considered.
The report presents some analysis by individual characteristic and is meant to serve as a guide for further research. In many cases, more than one factor (e.g. age and another protected characteristic, criminal history, socio-economic) may have an effect on an outcome.
The HMPPS Offender Equalities Report is produced and handled by the Ministry of Justice’s (MOJ) analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons: 2 x Chief Press officer, 1 x Deputy Director HMPPS Women’s Team, 1 x Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and SoS of MoJ, 1 x Director General for Performance Strategy and Analysis, 1 x Director General for Policy and Strategy Group, 1 x Deputy Director, Head of Insights & Analysis, 1 x Deputy Director, Data and Evidence as a Service: Prison, Probation and Reoffending, 1 x Head of News, 1 x HMCTS Director, 1 x Minister of State, 1 x Operational researcher, 1 x Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, 4 x Policy advisor, 2 x Press Officer, 1 x Principle research officer, 2 x Senior Press Officer, 3 x Special Advisor, 5 x Statistician
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
(:unav)...........................................
Not seeing a result you expected?
Learn how you can add new datasets to our index.
Approximately ****** prisoners in England and Wales identified as being Christian in 2024, the most of any religious faith among prisoners. A further ****** identified as having no religion, while ****** identified as Muslims.