My right honourable friend the Minister of State (David Hanson) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

I am, with my right honourable friend the Minister of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Beverley Hughes), announcing the national targets for reducing adult and youth reoffending. Our new challenging targets will help drive a focus across government on those offenders who commit the highest number of offences and cause the most damage to communities.

The new national targets are:

to reduce the adult reoffending rate by 10 per cent between 2005 and 2011; and

to reduce the youth reoffending rate by 10 per cent between 2005 and 2011.

(The reoffending rate is defined as the number of reoffences per 100 offenders (frequency)).

These targets demonstrate the Government’s continuing commitment to tackling reoffending. For adult offenders, this commitment has seen a 7.4 per cent reduction in the number of reoffenders compared to a predicted rate, and an 11.4 per cent fall in the frequency rate of reoffending between 2000 and 2005. For juvenile reoffenders, while the number of reoffenders has remained stable, we have seen a 17.4 per cent fall in the frequency rate of reoffending between 2000 and 2005.

These targets underpin an indicator in the Make Communities Safer public service agreement, published last year, which set out how we will work to reduce adult and youth reoffending and reduce crime.

The new targets will continue to focus partners across government and beyond to work together to reduce reoffending. We will continue to provide support for those offenders who are trying to change and turn away from offending, but for those offenders unwilling to change, the targets provide renewed emphasis of the need to catch and convict them as speedily and efficiently as possible.

Spending Review 2002 target

We will report our performance against the 2002 spending review target to reduce reoffending by 5 per cent by 2006 when the 2006 data become available.