The Bishop of Gloucester received the following written answers on 26th January 2026:
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester asked His Majesty’s Government how many people of each ethnic group were in prison as of 30 September 2025 by religion.
Lord Timpson (Lab, MoJ): The information requested is set out in the attached table. Please note that the figures in the table have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. Where necessary, [c] has been used to suppress values of one or two to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further disclosure control may be completed where this alone is not sufficient. This could include the secondary suppression of zero values. The Answer includes the following attached material: HL13694_table [2026-02-02 PQ HL16394 – Data.xlsx] The material can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Lords/2026-01-19/HL1369
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester asked His Majesty’s Government (1) how many, and (2) what proportion of, prisoner leavers who were assessed as posing high or very high risk of harm were classed as homeless or rough sleeping at release between April 2024 to March 2025.
Lord Timpson: The information requested is set out in the table below:
Offenders assessed as high to very high risk of serious harm, released homeless or rough sleeping on first night of release, England and Wales, April 2024 – March 2025.
| Risk of Serious Harm category | Releases from custody | Homeless, not rough sleeping | Rough sleeping | Homeless, not rough sleeping (%) | Rough sleeping (%) |
| Very High | 2,765 | 20 | 330 | 0.7% | 11.9% |
| High | 38,435 | 330 | 4,980 | 0.9% | 13.0% |
| Total | 41,205 | 350 | 5,310 | 0.8% | 12.9% |
All prisoners at risk of becoming homeless and who are supervised by probation can be offered up to 12 weeks of basic accommodation on release by HM Prison and Probation Service with support to move to settled accommodation. This programme has been gradually rolled out nationwide since July 2021 and since then has supported over 23,100 prison leavers who would otherwise have been homeless. For those prison leavers and people on probation who present the highest levels of risk of harm, placements can be provided through our CAS1 Approved Premises provision.
Data caveats:
- Data sourced from nDelius; while data has been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset, the possibility of errors cannot be eliminated.
- To protect the disclosure of personal information of any individual, all cases within the tables are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.
- Releases from custody include: releases following recall, releases following committal to custody for breach of post sentence supervision and releases at sentence expiry or post sentence supervision expiry.
- Release on temporary licence (RoTL), releases where the individual is subject to same-day recall to custody, releases from unsupervised short sentences and releases both to and from Immigration Removal Centres are not included.
- Where an offender has been released from custody more than once in the period, they will be counted once for each release, with the accommodation circumstance relevant at the time of that release.
- In instances where an individual has had multiple releases on the same day, only one of the records is assessed. All other instances of the records are excluded.
- Due to use of different inclusion criteria and data cleansing, the total volume of releases in this dataset will not necessarily match official statistics for total offender releases.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester asked His Majesty’s Government, for the period from April 2022 to March 2023, what proportion of people released from prison went on to reoffend; how many repeat offences were committed per reoffender on average; what was the total number of repeat offences; and what was the total number of repeat offences by custodial sentence length for (1) men, and (2) women.
Lord Timpson: For the period from April 2022 to March 2023: • Adults released from a custodial sentence had a proven reoffending rate of 37.5%. Men released from custody had a reoffending rate of 36.9% and women released from custody had a reoffending rate of 46.0%.
• The average number of reoffences per reoffender following release from custody was 5.18 for men and 6.78 for women.
• The total number of reoffences was 80,293 for men and 9,718 for women.
Proven reoffending rates, average number of reoffences per reoffender, and the total number of reoffences by sentence length for men and women can be found in the attached Excel table. Public protection is our priority so offenders out on licence face strict conditions such as being tagged and can be hauled back to prison if they break these rules. Since 2018, recalled offenders have doubled — a symptom of the prison crisis this Government inherited. That’s why we’re reforming sentencing and building 14,000 extra places, to make sure punishment cuts crime, reduces reoffending and keeps victims safe. 26 Monday 26 January 2026 Written Answers The Answer includes the following attached material: HL13693_table [2026-02-02 PQ HL13693 Table.xlsx] The material can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Lords/2026-01-19/HL13693
The Church of England in Parliament 
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