Prison: the FACTS
The average annual cost of a prison place is £36,237.
The rise in the prison population represents an additional cost of £1.22 billion annually—that's over £40 per year for every UK taxpayer.
On 17 June 2016, the prison population in England and Wales was 84,405. Almost double the total in 1993.
The prison system as a whole has been overcrowded in every year since 1994.
47% of prisoners say they have no qualifications. This compares to 15% of the working age general population in the UK.
49% of women and 23% of male prisoners in a Ministry of Justice study were assessed as suffering from anxiety and depression.
290 people died in prison in the 12 months to March 2016, the highest number on record. Over a third of these deaths were self-inflicted.
England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe, locking up 149 people per 100,000 of the population.
Prison education standards are deteriorating. Almost three-quarters of prisons inspected by Ofsted were judged as requiring improvement or inadequate for learning and skills.
The number of staff employed in the public prison estate has fallen by 29% in the last four years
12,980 fewer staff.
Rates of self-harm are at the highest level ever recorded. There were 32,313 self-harm incidents in 2015—a nearly 40% rise in just two years.
Emergency services were called out more than 26,600 times to incidents in UK prisons in 2015.
The discharge grant has remained fixed at £46 since 1997. Thousands of prisoners are ineligible, including those released from remand, fine defaulters and people serving less than 15 days.
The number of sentenced prisoners aged 60 and over rose by 164% between 2002 and 2015.
