The prison estate of England and Wales, updated daily.
Custelligence gathers what the government already publishes about every prison, young offender institution and immigration removal centre in England and Wales, and keeps it in one place. Where each establishment is and who runs it. How many people it holds against the accommodation it is certified for. Every inspection report the Inspectorate has published about it, and every death the Ombudsman has investigated there. None of it is typed in by hand: the database rebuilds itself each day from the most recent official release, and every figure carries the date it was published — including the ones that are months old, because some of this is only published quarterly.
- People held
- 86,868
- Useable capacity
- 88,943
- Places left
- 2,075
National figures, week ending 7 Sept 2026. Weekly bulletin
- Establishments
- 123
- Above certified accommodation
- 53
- Held across the estate
- 86,843
Per-establishment figures, as at 24 Aug 2026 — the most recent monthly release.
What you can open
Custody Map
Every establishment plotted, filterable by category, operator, who it holds and where. Each one opens onto contact details, capacity, occupancy over time and the inspection reports and announcements that name it.
Open the mapReports and investigations
Healthy prison assessments — the Inspectorate's own ratings for safety, respect, purposeful activity and rehabilitation — shown against each establishment, alongside the full HMIP report archive, fatal incident investigations from the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, and HMPPS announcements naming a specific prison.
Find an establishmentWeekly bulletin
The national population and useable operational capacity, published every Friday and the most current figure available — with the headroom between them tracked week by week.
See this weekLicence recalls
How many people released on licence are recalled to custody each quarter, by offence group and by sex — with the legislative changes that reshaped the numbers marked alongside them.
See the figuresCustody Situation Room
Coming soonPlanned: a live read on pressure across the estate — where crowding is worsening, which establishments sit furthest above their certified accommodation, and how the picture has moved since the last release.
Custelligence is powered by the Centre for Forensic Hope.
The non-profit behind this work, focused on hope, desistance and identity change with people affected by offending and imprisonment — through research, training and direct practice.
Visit the CentreRecently added: Licence recalls · Readable on a phone · Deaths linked to establishments. What has changed
Take the data
Everything here is public sector information under the Open Government Licence, and it leaves the way it arrived. The full dataset is available as JSON at /api/prisons, and as GeoJSON for QGIS or Leaflet at /api/prisons?format=geojson. Every ingest run, including the ones that fail, is logged openly at feed status.