Prison Population Projections 2014 – 2020 
1. Central Scenario 
This bulletin presents prison population projections for England and Wales 
from November 2014 to December 2020. The central projection is produced to 
aid development, capacity planning and resource allocation within the Criminal 
Justice System (CJS) and the National Offender Management Service 
(NOMS). The latest published useable operational capacity (21 November 
2014) is 88,0152. 
The Central Scenario estimates that the prison population will rise to 87,700 
by the end of June 2015 and to 90,200 by the end of June 2020. 
The Central Scenario tracks the impact of current trends in sentencing on 
custodial convictions, custodial sentence lengths and hence on the resulting 
prison population. These assumptions have been agreed through a 
consultative process. Government policy is only included in these projections 
when it has received Royal Assent. These projections also take into account 
other drivers including:  
 trends in the age, gender and offence of defendants entering the 
system and in the flow of cases through the courts; 
 assumptions regarding future parole hearing frequency and expected 
outcomes for indeterminate (Life and Indeterminate for the Public 
Protection) sentences; 
 the Home Office gaining access to all 580 places at the 
Verne Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) by January 2015; 
 the impacts of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 3 which achieved 
Royal Assent on 13 March 2014 meaning offenders sentenced to 
custodial sentences of less than 12 months will be released subject to 
licence. There will also be a new post-sentence supervision period 
following licence for offenders released from custodial sentences of 
less than 2 years;  
 the impacts of the Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL) review 
deciding that all offenders who have previously absconded will no 
longer be allowed to return to the open estate or be released on 
temporary licence except in exceptional circumstances. 
                                                 
2 www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-population-figures-2014 
3 www.justice.gov.uk/transforming-rehabilitation 
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