Prisons are overcrowded but escapes are not as common as they used to be

The Labour Party took to Facebook last night to claim:

Following a few high profile cases of absonding prisoners in the last few months, in June Full Fact took a look at how regular the occurrence was. There's three ways by which prisoners are counted as having gone on the run: 'escaping', 'absconding' and 'failing to return on temporary licence'.

Escapes - where prisoners breach a physical barrier - happen rarely and are much less common than in previous decades, though they have ticked up slightly in the last year.

The number of absconds - where there's no physical barrier, like in open prisons - also rose slightly in the last two years, but are happening less often than they used to as well.

The third way is failing to return on temporary licence - where prisoners fail to return when they're required. This has seen an increase in occurrences, although the number has fallen in the last year. This is partly because the practice of releasing prisoners has also been used more often.

There's more detail on these in our Factcheck. We've also covered overcrowing in prisons in a Factcheck from June. The answer: prisons are overcrowded and are close to what's considered to be a safe capacity.