To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) what the (a) community and (b) custody caseload for Staffordshire probation area was on 31 March in each of the last five financial years; (276982)

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

The total number of offenders in Staffordshire who were categorised as Tier 4 as at 31 March in each of the last three years was as follows:

Information on tier prior to 1 April 2005 was not recorded.

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 Staffordshire. 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. Cases can be referred by any agency but the identity of the referring agency is not recorded. This data is taken from Staffordshire's MAPPA annual report.

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.