Nearly half the 850 Brent residents sent to London jails in the financial year 2007-08 did not have a job and almost a third used drugs.

These statistics are contained in the 'Brent Offender Profile 2007/08'.

Suspects being held on remand while awaiting trial accounted for the largest group of new arrivals between April 1 2007 and March 31 2008. Of the 845 new prisoners from the borough, 448 - or 53 per cent - were on remand.

There were 124 people who had been convicted but were yet to be sentenced and 243 were serving prisoners.

Just 24 were former inmates who had been recalled to prison to finish their punishment after breaking the terms of their licence.

Almost half of all the 845 new prisoners from the borough were unemployed before they ended up in a cell - higher than the London average. Nearly a third used drugs and a little more than 22 per cent had physical health problems.

A third either had no permanent address or were living in temporary accommodation at the time of their imprisonment.

Of those jailed by a court, two thirds were given prison sentences of less than a year while 16 per cent got between a year and four years and nine per cent received jail terms of more than four years.

The most common offence committed by convicts from Brent was violence against the person - this was also the most common crime citywide - followed by low-level motoring crimes, theft and handling stolen goods.

In a faith survey, 201 new prisoners said they were Christian, 183 Roman Catholic, 174 Muslim, 136 stated that they had no religion, 29 classified themselves as Hindu, five Rastafarian, the same number were Buddhist, four Jewish and two Sikh. Seventy-nine were unknown and 27 classified as 'other'.

Splitting the convicts by ethnicity, 280 were white, 160 of whom described themselves as 'white British'. 206 classed themselves as 'black Carribean' and 86 as 'black African'.

Most Brent additions to the prison system, 437, were jailed at HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs in Acton, west London - not surprising given Brent falls within its catchment area - followed by Pentonville in Islington, north London.

The 'Brent Offender Profile' data was based on 15-minute interviews conducted with each prisoner within the first four days of their jail term.