About this data
- Figures are the number of people in prison in England and Wales on 30 June each year.
- Remand includes people awaiting trial and people convicted but not yet sentenced. Sentences of 4 years or more include extended determinate sentences.
- Life and IPP (imprisonment for public protection) counts people who have not yet been released. People recalled to prison after release on licence, including those on life and IPP sentences, are counted as recalls. Recalls are only counted separately from 2009; before that, they are included in the sentence length groups.
- People held under immigration powers, fine defaulters and those whose sentence length was not recorded (fewer than 1,000 in 2026) are not shown.
This chart appears in Prisons.