Ministry of Justice · Prison population: monthly bulletin
Prison population by establishment
86,267people
Prison population by establishment were 86,267 people at 31 July 2026.
- Ministry of Justice snapshot
- July 2026
- published 10 August 2026
- Monthly Bulletin
- row “Total”
- column “Population *”
- cell value 86267
What this measures
The number of prisoners held in each establishment in England and Wales on the last working Monday of the month, from the Ministry of Justice's monthly population bulletin.
What this doesn’t measure
Certified normal accommodation or operational capacity (published alongside but not extracted), or people on authorised absence separately from the population.
Important caveat
The monthly bulletin is management information compiled by the Capacity Management Team from data on the last working Monday of the month; it is not an accredited official statistic. The population figure includes prisoners on authorised absence, so the number unlocked in an establishment may be lower. Certified normal accommodation and operational capacity are taken from the latest signed cell certificates and can change as cells are opened, closed or repaired.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- Ministry of Justice
- Publication
- Prison population: monthly bulletin
- Release
- July 2026, published 10 August 2026
- Source file
- prison-pop-july-2026.ODS
- File SHA-256
- 3fa36fb19b9aa597da0c73a984d0a08f90ac119010973b2e23b1bfba52640d4c
- Retrieved
- 2 September 2026
- Sheet
- MonthlyBulletin
- Table
- Monthly Bulletin
- Row
- Total
- Column
- Population *
- Cell value
- 86267
- Geography
- England and Wales
- Unit
- people
- API
- /api/metrics/prison_population_by_establishment · /series · /vintages
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
- Release
- July 2026 · publication page
- Last updated
- 10 August 2026
- Next release expected
- Not yet announced (estimated from the usual cadence)