text: **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; 