This report is the latest in the Wales Governance Centre’s Prison Factfile series. The report draws together  information on prisons and sentencing published by the Ministry of Justice, including the second Welsh Justice Data Release, as well as a raft of previously unseen data obtained via the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and in response to written parliamentary questions tabled by Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. The aim of this Factfile is to once again contribute to a more territorially refined, critical, and informed discussion on criminal justice in Wales. It is hoped that the breadth of evidence and information presented here will support greater scrutiny of the Welsh justice system, while also informing political and public debates on the future of justice in Wales, as well as shaping academic research agendas that seek to render Wales visible as a distinct unit of analysis.

P. 7 Drug poisoning (with intent undetermined) accounted for over a third (37 per cent) of all deaths among prison leavers supervised in the community in Wales during 2024/25. By comparison, this category accounted for just over a fifth (21 per cent) of deaths among prison leavers supervised in the community across England and Wales as a whole last year.
Despite managing only 6 per cent of the total probation caseload across England and Wales, Wales accounted for 15 per cent of all self-inflicted deaths attributed to drug poisoning (with intent undetermined) among prison leavers supervised by the probation service in the community in 2024/25.

P. 62 In a recent report on reducing deaths among prison leavers, Nacro (2026: 1) identified homelessness as ‘a major risk factor in post-release deaths’ in England and Wales. Similarly, a report published by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman (2024a) found that one-third of prison leavers who died within two weeks of release from prison had been released into homelessness. The Prison and Probation Ombudsman’s (2024a: 8) research also identified a ‘clear link’ between homelessness and substance use, with many prison leavers returning to drug and/or alcohol use following their release into the community.

P.63 Drug poisoning remains by far the most common cause of ‘self-inflicted’ deaths among prison leavers in England and Wales. Since changes to data collection practices in 2019, the number of drug-related deaths in the year post-release has doubled in England and Wales. According to Nacro (2026: 4), this trend underlines the need for ‘urgent action’ to better support people with a history of substance use and reduce the number of preventable deaths following release from prison.
Drug poisoning (with intent undetermined) accounted for over a third (37 per cent) of all deaths among prison leavers supervised in the community in Wales in 2024/25.75 This was substantially higher than the proportion recorded across England and Wales as a whole, where deaths attributed to drug poisoning (with intent undetermined) accounted for just over a fifth (21 per cent) of the total....