Prison Sentences

Question

The National Offender Management Service's central accounting system does not separately identify details of budgets allocated for the provision of courses for all prisoners serving indeterminate sentence, or by conviction categories. Budgets associated with such expenditure are primarily met through establishment baseline funding and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost by examining locally held records at each establishment, disaggregating and then collating the costs that relate to the relevant categories of offenders and courses.

There is no set departmental guidance on the proportional allocation of individual budgets. Prison budgets are compiled annually based on an assessment of operational business needs and may vary from year to year according to changes in Departmental priorities.