Re-offenders

Mr. Hollobone
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what his most recent estimate is of the re-offending rates for convicted prisoners who served (a) less than six months, (b) between six months and one year, (c) between one year and five years and (d) five years and over in prison.

Mr. Hanson
Information about re-offending rates cannot be provided broken down by length of time served. The Police National Computer database, which is the source for statistics on re-offending, only holds data on the length of prison sentence awarded, and not the length of time that an offender serves of this sentence. We do publish re-offending statistics broken down by the length of prison sentence awarded, as shown in the following table. This table shows the proportion of offenders re-offending within one year of discharge and the number of offences committed per 100 offenders, for offenders leaving custody in the first quarter of 2006. These are the most recently available data.

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|                                 |Number of offenders|Proportion of offenders offending (percentage)|Number of offences per 100 offenders|
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|Custody (total)                  |14,380             |46.5                                          |208.4                               |
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|Less than 12 months              |9,103              |58.8                                          |282.7                               |
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|12 months to less than two years |2,028              |29.6                                          |101.9                               |
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|Two years to less than four years|2,013              |25.9                                          |80.5                                |
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|Four years and over              |1,236              |17.3                                          |45.0                                |
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The latest adult re-offending statistics. “Re-offending of adults: results from the 2006 cohort”, were published on 4 September 2008. These indicate that we have had real success in reducing the re-offending of offenders released from custody. Between 2000 and 2006 the number of re-offences committed by offenders released from custody has fallen 15.1 per cent. from 245.5 to 208.4 offences per 100 offenders.

Further information on the one year rates of re-offending can be found in:

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

NOMS is working with the Ministry of Justice to review provision for the short sentence group.

The Integrated Offender Management projects are testing a new approach to working with repeat adult and young offenders.