To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of community service alternatives to prison sentences in reducing rates of re-offending; and if she will make a statement. (259560)

I have been asked to reply.

The following table shows the latest re-offending figures for people who were released from a custodial sentence, or commenced a court order under probation supervision, between 1 January 2006 and 31 March 2006. The table shows the number of offenders in the cohort, the proportion of offenders that committed at least one further offence and the number of further offences committed per 100 offenders.

These statistics should not be compared to assess the effectiveness of sentences as there is no control for known differences in offender characteristics. There are known differences between characteristics of these two groups of offender which may affect the choice of disposal, such as number of previous offences.

For a time series, and more detailed breakdown of the aforementioned table, please see table A5 in the publication Re-offending of .Adults: results of the 2006 cohort:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/reoffendingofadults.htm

The Government want community sentences to be tough, effective and visible. Part of this programme of work has been creating seven Intensive Alternatives to Custody (IAC) demonstrator projects, which provide intensively delivered and supervised community sentence options to courts as an alternative to short-term custody. These projects were announced by the Justice Secretary on 5 December 2007 and the first project commenced operations in March 2008. The seven projects will run for three years and will be subject to a rigorous evaluation to be delivered in 2011.