Escape is Not an Option… or is it?
Has Khalife set the bar behind bars?
Britain¹ was watching the news with anticipation this weekend as Daniel Khalife escaped from HMP Wandsworth, a prison in South London as he was awaiting trial on terrorism charges
While he was apprehended again 4 days later, it begs the question about how common it is for people to break out of prison
How many people break out of prison in Britain?
First, its worth highlighting that the prison population has generally increased over time, and at a faster pace than the general population has grown
Back in 1900 there were 17,400 prisoners, or 47 prisoners per 100,000 people in the general population
It stayed relatively stable until after WW2 when the number of prisoners started steadily rising, and then rose more sharply in the 1990s from 44k to 64k across the decade. It’s peak was hit in 2012 at 86,000 (135 prisoners for every 100,000 people) and has only come down marginally since then
Despite the lower prison population, the number of breakouts was actually higher in earlier decades. Back in 1995/96, 88 people broke out of prison (or 0.17% of the total population of 50,000)
Nowadays, prison escapes have actually become been quite rare
Between 2012–2022, the highest number of prisoners who escaped from within a prison was 4 in 2017 (or 0.005% of the c. 85,000 prisoners that were behind bars that year, or 34x less than in 1995, relative to the size of the prison population)
These escapes also don’t happen completely randomly across the 117 prisons in England & Wales. Some had a lot more escapes than others (between 1995–2022):
- Verne, a Category C prison in Avon and South Dorset with 19 escapes
- Werrington, a youth custody prison in Stoke with 12 people escaping
- Lindholme, in Yorkshire, and Ranby, in the Midlands, both had 11 escapees in this period
Wandsworth, by comparison, had only 2 escapees over these 27 years
It is more common for prisoners to escape during an escort than when in a prison (often between 5–15 escapes per year over this period), although these were rarely the worst offenders. There hadn’t been an escape from a Category A (maximum security) prison since 2013
But most of these are normally quickly reprimanded after their escape. Between 2017–22, only 16 escapees (out of 70) were still at large after 30 days of “freedom”
How does this compare to other countries?
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that the United States has both the highest prison population in the world (just over 2 million) and one of the highest incarceration rates (505 prisons per 100,000 population) - a lot more than the UK’s rate of 135
The only countries with highest incarceration rates are:
- El Salvador (605 prisons per 100,000 people)
- Rwanda (580)
- Turkmenistan (576)
- Cuba (510)
When looking at the number of prisoners who escape, countries with the smaller prison populations also appear to have more who then escape
For example, North Macedonia (691 per 10,000 prisoners based on 2019 data), the Netherlands (315), Switzerland (284) and most Nordic countries (c. 50–150) have some of the highest rates of prison escapes in Europe. Britain in comparison had 17 escapes per 10,000 people in the same time period
And what about issues with race in prisons?
I couldn’t have an article about prisons and not mention the inequality in criminal justice in some of these countries
The United States is also well known for the inequity in their prison system with Black Americans being incarcerated at almost 5x the rate of White, non-Latino Americans (1,240 per 100,000 Black American residents vs. 261 for White, non-Latino)
While maybe not to the same extent, a disparity also exists in Britain with c. 28% of the prison population identifying as Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic, vs. closer to 18% of the general population
There is so much more that could be said on racial inequality in racial justice, so you’ll just have to wait for one of our next GoodStats where we’ll go into that topic in a lot more detail
Note¹: most prison stats that are available are actually for England & Wales, but this is a bit of a mouthful compared to “Britain”. So whenever I say, the UK or Britain in this article, I’m almost certainly referring to England & Wales unless I say otherwise
Check out more GoodStats about society:
- It’s a Steal; The ongoing problems with Art Theft
- The world is reaching con-census; Have you been enumerated?
- Alllllll the people… So many people!
