More than 200,000 children have a parent in prison in England and Wales, new data reveals.
Figures released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) showed an estimated 219,000 children had a parent incarcerated from October 2023 to October 2024, with an estimated 2% of these children at school age. At least half (53%) were considered to be at risk of harm from their imprisoned parent.
The latest data, sourced from HM Prison and Probation Service and HM Revenue and Customs, shows an increase on previous estimates which found around 192,000 children had parents in prison between October 2021 and October 2022.
The transparency data follows a new government scheme announced in July which connects “hidden” vulnerable children with vital support.
The programme is “important for prevention of harm”, the MoJ said, and will see relevant information shared across multiple public services including prisons, police and local councils.
The data is currently fragmented and split across services leading to children being “at risk of falling through the cracks”, the MoJ added.
A spokesperson for the MoJ said: “While these are early indicative findings, this work aims to ultimately enable all affected children to be identified and offered support.
“To this end, future work may include further data linkage, improved information extraction from free-text records, or better data collection.
“Without address data, information cannot be passed to local authorities to identify and support children.”
