Dear Mr Tyes,

Request for information

Thank you for your e-mail of 7 March, in which you asked for details below on Prisoners from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

What percentages of prisoners have their own cell broken down by male and female.

Please could you also tell me the percentage of prisoners who are

Fathers and mothers.

The percentage of prisoners who were brought up by single mothers with little or no contact with their natural father.

The percentage of prisoners who are first time offenders broken down male/female.

Your request has been passed to me because I have responsibility for answering requests which relate to National Offender Management Service (NOMS) which includes the Prison and Probation Services and has been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

We can answer your first question in part only as some of the data is not held in the format you requested as 10% of the information is not held in the correct format. The reply below is based on details of 90% of prisoners as of the 20 March 2009.

Male position

Female position

All data has been obtained from the Local Inmate Database System (LIDS).

Q2/3 - these data are not routinely collected. However, the Ministry of Justice is currently conducting a large scale longitudinal survey of prisoners (men and women) part of which is collecting information on the number of prisoners who were living with dependent children (under 18) as a single parent just before arriving in prison. The survey also asks prisoners for the living arrangements of those dependent children since their reception to prison. Information from this survey will provide some assessment of the outcomes of dependent children when their single parent goes to prison. These findings are likely to be available towards the end of 2009.

A report from this study has been published and can be found at

http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/problems-needs-prisoners.htm

This gives more detail on the study and its methodology.

MoJ have contracted MORI to conduct the Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction study. The SPCR asked prisoners who they lived with while they were growing up; results from this will be available from the end of 2009.

In order to obtain this information at the present time would necessitate going through all the personal files of prisoners currently detained in order to collate the information (if available on the file) you have requested, this would incur disproportionate costs.

Under s.12 of the FoIA, the MOJ is not obliged to comply with any information request where the prescribed costs of supplying you with the information exceed £600. The £600 limit applies to all central government departments and is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 3½ days work per request. Prescribed costs include those which cover the cost of locating and retrieving information, and preparing our response to you. They do not include considering whether any information is exempt from disclosure, overheads such as heating or lighting, or disbursements such as photocopying or postage. Although we hold the information your have requested, but have estimated that the cost of answering your request would exceed the £600 limit and we are therefore unable to comply with it.

I am sorry but I cannot suggest a way in which your request could be refined so as to bring it within the cost limit.

Q4 -

This information is published in table 7.32 of the Offender Management Casework Statistics (OMCS) 2007, a link to which is provided below.

(http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/prisonandprobation.htm)

As the information you are seeking is already available in the public domain, it is exempt from disclosure under Section 21 (Information reasonably accessible to the applicant) of the FOIA.

I hope that the information that I have been able to provide is satisfactory.

As part of our obligations under the FOIA, the Ministry of Justice has an independent review process. If you are dissatisfied with this decision, you may write to request an internal review. The internal review will be carried out by someone who did not make the original decision, and they will re-assess how the Department handled the original request.

If you wish to request an internal review, please write or send an email to the Data Access and Compliance Unit within two months of the date of this letter, at the following address:

Data Access and Compliance Unit

Information Directorate

Ministry of Justice

1^st Floor, Zone 1C

Post point 1.41

102 Petty France

London

SW1H 9AJ

e-mail: [email address]

If you remain dissatisfied after an internal review decision, you have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner's Office under Section 50 of the FOIA. You can contact the Information Commissioner's Office at the following address:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Internet: https://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/contact_us.aspx

Yours sincerely

Dave Norris

Case Officer