FORECASTING PRISON POPULATION

The government has, this morning, published its document “Prison Population Projections 2013 – 2019 England and Wales”.  Generally it is a statistical analysis containing in simple English the caveats, but, perhaps, if, depending etc etc etc.  The reasons for such imprecision are of course because the inputs to the final actual numbers of those incarcerated at any future time are almost infinite.  From such bases as licensing hours to the numbers of males born between 1995 and 2001 to the  success or most likely failure  of  Mr    Grayling`s Transformation of Rehabilitation to the government`s efforts to secure convicted EU nationals in their own countries, to an expansion of magistrates` sentencing powers,  to……………..

With a pre determined number of prison places, even at rates admitting of overcrowding, government will tailor the results to suit its circumstances.   One notable admission from the document is inclusion of forecasts made 3, 5 or 7 years ago.  Perhaps such forecasts were so inaccurate that their resurrection would be, at the best interpretation, unfavourable.