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Reoffenders

Volume 477: debated on Monday 16 June 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether the National Offender Management Service has conducted research on the actual or predicted recidivism rates of offenders by (a) custodial institution, (b) probation service area and (c) local criminal justice board area. (210633)

The Ministry of Justice is currently undertaking a programme of work to look at how best to produce these data (accounting for the different types of prisons and movement of offenders between prisons). This work should be completed by the end of the financial year 2008-09.

The Ministry of Justice has developed internal management information on reoffending for use by probation areas. These data show a timely area-based reoffending measure on a different basis from the published National Statistics on reoffending. Over the next few months as part of the local area agreements process, the Ministry of Justice will be working through plans for how best and when to publish these data.

The measure shows, for each of the 42 probation areas, the proportion of those on the probation caseload who reoffended within three months and were convicted within six months of the end of every quarter. This actual rate is compared to a predicted rate of reoffending. These experimental statistics are circulated to probation areas four times a year.

Local criminal justice board areas are coterminous with probation areas.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many offenders aged 18 to 24 years old reoffended within two years of leaving prison in the last five years. (210712)

The latest statistics on re-offending published in May 2008 report the re-offending rates over a one year follow up period.

The following table shows the one-year proven re-offending rates for offenders aged 18 to 24 years old leaving prison in the first quarter for 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Total number of offenders

Number of offenders that re-offended

Actual one-year re-offending rate (percentage)

2000 Q1

6,048

3,705

61.3

2002 Q1

5,983

3,735

62.4

2003 Q1

5,382

3,277

60.9

2004 Q1

5,454

3,118

57.2

2005 Q1

4,932

2,704

54.8

For more information on the latest re-offending statistics, including additional information on frequency and severity of re-offending please consult:

www.justice.gov.uk/docs/re-offending-adults-2000-05.pdf