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Prison system in the UK - Statistics & Facts

In 2023, approximately 92,803 people people were in prison custody in the United Kingdom, of which 82,128 were in England and Wales, 7,775 in Scotland, and a further 1,900 were in Northern Ireland. According to the Council of Europe, Scotland had the highest incarceration rate among UK jurisdictions, with a prisoner population of 135.8 per 100,000 people, slightly above England and Wales at 132.3, and Northern Ireland at 83.6. As a comparison, the average incarceration rate for the European Union was 117, falling to 107 in France, and just 67 in Germany.

Prison system crisis putting prisoners and staff at risk

Several key indicators suggest the UK prison system is currently facing difficulties in key areas. Prison overcrowding, for example, is an ongoing problem, despite the building of large new prisons such as HMS Berwyn in Wrexham. As of September 2023, the prison population of England and Wales was operating close to full-capacity, with just 768 spare prison places available. Furthermore, there is evidence that prisons are generally becoming more violent places than in the past. Between 2015 and 2020 there was a surge of assaults at prisons, with both prisoner-on-prisoner violence and staff assaults peaking in the third quarter of 2018. The number of deaths at prisons in England and Wales reached a high of 371 in 2021, which when adjusted for prisoner population size, was the highest death rate between 1978 and 2022. A significant number of these deaths were due to prisoner suicides, with 89 taking place across the whole of 2021, and most quarters seeing between 10 and 30 self-inflicted deaths since 2000. There has also been a worrying increase in the amount of self-harm incidents at prisons, which reached a peak of 16,543 incidents in the first quarter of 2023, compared with 4,442 in the second quarter of 2004.

Prisoner demographics

The vast majority of incarcerated adults in the UK are men, with 83,128 male prisoners compared to just 3,259 women in England and Wales in 2023. Similarly, in Scotland, there were 7,221 men in prison, and 283 women as of the 2021/22 reporting year. When looking at the age profile of prisoners, most are under the age of 40, with the most common age group in England and Wales those aged 30 to 39, at 28,524 prisoners, with similar patterns among the prison populations of Scotland and Northern Ireland. As of 2023, white prisoners were the most common ethnicity at prisons in England and Wales, at 61,823, compared with 10,494 Black prisoners, 6,840 Asian prisoners, and a further 4,153 of mixed ethnicity. In the same year, the most common foreign nationality of prisoners in England and Wales was Albanian, at 1,475 prisoners, followed by Polish at 856 prisoners.
This text provides general information. Statista assumes no liability for the information given being complete or correct. Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date data than referenced in the text.
Published by D. Clark, Dec 20, 2023

Key insights

Number of prisoners in custody in the UK 2023
92,803
Largest UK prison by population 2023
HMP Oakwood
Average annual cost of a prison place in England and Wales 2022
46,696 GBP
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Number of prisoners in England and Wales 2022 by length of sentence

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Demographics

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Criminal justice system in the UK
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Prison system in Romania
Prison system in Romania

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