The total community and pre-release custodial offender caseload for West Midlands as at 31 March in each of the last five years was as follows:
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Supervised in community 12,872 12,966 12,892 13,550 13,530 Supervised in custody 5,907 5,992 6,202 6,182 6,142
Total probation staffing (expressed as full time equivalents) was up from 13,968 in 1997 to 20,869 by June 2007, a 49 per cent. increase over the period.
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.