Written Question: DPP Deaths in Custody

Lord Moylan: To ask His Majesty's Government how many deaths were recorded of people serving a sentence of Detention for Public Protection in each year since 2005; and of those, how many were classified as (1) homicide, (2) natural causes, (3) self-inficted, or (4) other.

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy, KC):

The total number of deaths that were recorded of people serving a sentence of Detention for Public Protection in each year since 2005 under the above classifications, was two or fewer. We cannot provide further specificity without a risk of breaching our confidentiality obligations by disclosing additional information about identifiable individuals who have died. Please also note that:

• • The underlying data includes deaths within the youth estate and during contracted out escorts.

• • The underlying data is derived from matching between HMPPS deaths data and Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD) data. A total of 13 prisoners identified in the PPUD data did not have an associated National Offender Management Information System (NOMIS) identifier. Additionally, this only includes individuals identified in NOMIS as serving IPP or DPP sentences, and also as serving a DPP sentence in PPUD data – the underlying data is an estimate based on these two sources and as inconsistencies in recording between these two sources exist it should be treated with caution.

• • The underlying data has been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.