To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent evaluation has taken place of the efficacy of the prolific and priority offenders programme in (a) Peterborough and (b) Cambridgeshire; and if she will make a statement. (226066)

The Home Office has not commissioned a separate evaluation of the Prolific and other Priority Offender programme in Peterborough or Cambridgeshire. A report on the national evaluation of programme was published in February 2007 as Home Office Online report 08/07. This showed that those offenders first selected as Prolific and other Priority Offenders in September and October 2004 had a reduction of 62 per cent. in their overall level of convictions over their first 17 months on the programme. These findings are very positive, although we cannot necessarily attribute them solely to the programme because we do not know what would have happened had it not been introduced.

A copy of the full evaluation report is available on the Home Office and crime reduction websites

www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/onlinepubs1.html

www.crimereduction.gov.uk/ppo/ppominisite01.htm.