To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) what the (a) community and (b) custody caseload was for North Yorkshire Probation Area on 31 March of each of the last five financial years; (277058)

The total community and pre-release custodial offender caseload for North Yorkshire as at 31 March in each of the last five years was as follows:

These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

The following table shows the total number of multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) eligible offenders living in the community in North Yorkshire. The table also shows the number of eligible offenders who were managed at the higher MAPPA levels and who were considered by multi-agency public protection panels. Cases are referred to level 2 where the ongoing involvement of several agencies will be required to implement or monitor the risk management plan and to level 3 where more senior oversight is additionally required. The data are taken from North Yorkshire's MAPPA annual report.

The doubling of level 2 cases from 2006 to 2007 reflects a change in the way North Yorkshire approached identifying category 3 cases and not a doubling of complex cases at that time.

There has been a 70 per cent. increase in probation funding in real terms over the last 10 years and an increase of more than a third in staff. The Probation Service continues to cut reoffending rates, increase successful drug treatments and offending behaviour programmes, and carry out visible and punitive community payback.