Forecasting the prison population – predicting the consequences of sentencing policy

This paper describes the development of a new methodology for making ‘long’ term projections of the prison population. The methodology is based on a flow model of offenders in and out of prison, allowing the effect of changes in court sentencing policy to be predicted. The heart of the methodology is a new theory of offending, allowing the number of first time offenders to be predicted and also the recidivism of those released from prison.