Wales specific justice data made available to public for first time

Emily Price

Wales specific justice data will be available for the public to access online for the first time following repeated calls for more transparency.

Previously, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) system used the nationality of ‘British’ to describe prisoners and did not record whether a person considered themselves ‘English’ or ‘Welsh’.

Although the MoJ has warned that the new data does not infer nationality – for the first time, the assorted prison statistics have been broken down into Welsh and English origin addresses.

Policy makers

The new Wales specific statistics show the number of prisoners with a Welsh origin address broken down by, prison, local authority, offence type, age, ethnicity and religion

Perviously, only some disaggregated Wales-only justice data was available through Freedom of Information requests.

The data published today (September 29) is the first Wales-specific dataset the Ministry of Justice has ever published publicly online.

It’s hoped the new dataset will help the UK Government, academics and policy makers better meet the needs of Welsh offenders and those in Welsh prisons.

The release of the data online was welcomed by the Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, Ruth Jones.

Calls

The committee – as well as its predecessors in the last two Parliaments – has repeatedly called on the Ministry of Justice to work with researchers and academics to publish disaggregated data for Wales to inform policy and decision making.

In 2019, the predecessor committee recommended in its report on Prisons Provision in Wales that the Ministry of Justice work with experts such as Dr Rob Jones of Cardiff University to publish Welsh justice data.

Similar calls were made in the last Parliament during the inquiry into Prisons in Wales and by the current Committee in its session with Prisons Minister Lord Timpson in December.

Commenting on the release of the new dataset from the Ministry of Justice, Ruth Jones said: “The Welsh Affairs Committee welcomes the publication of this important and long overdue dataset.

“We have consistently pushed for Welsh-specific justice data to be made publicly available as it will help ensure decisions within the criminal justice system are better informed and are more responsive and tailored to meet the needs of Welsh offenders.

“Despite the delays, this is a good day for those committed to transparency and for those working in, or alongside, the criminal justice system in Wales.

“We hope the Ministry of Justice will continue to work with the Committee to fill any remaining gaps in the data.”