About this data

Source: Ministry of Justice, Offender management statistics quarterly: January to March 2026 (prison population on 30 June 2026)

• Figures are the number of people in prison in England and Wales on 30 June each year.
• Covers sentenced prisoners only, not people on remand, by their main (most serious) offence. Smaller groups such as fraud and criminal damage are not shown.
• The Ministry of Justice moved to the current offence groups in 2015 and did not revise earlier years, so the series starts in 2015.
• The rise in public order offences from 2024 follows the sentencing of people involved in the disorder in summer 2024.

This chart appears in Prisons.