Reoffenders

Chris Grayling
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the number of prolific and priority offenders there were in each of the last 10 years.

Alan Johnson
The information requested is set out in the table. This shows the total number of offenders who were classified as Prolific and other Priority Offenders for each of the four full years since the Prolific and other Priority Offender programme was launched in September 2005.

Some offenders would have been classified as Prolific and other Priority Offenders during the course of the years shown, and others de-classified during the years shown, in accordance with local selection and de-selection criteria. At any given time, the total number of offenders classified as Prolific and other Priority Offenders is between 10,000 and 11,000 offenders.

The published evaluation of the Prolific and other Priority Offender programme in 2004 showed that the offenders first taken on to the programme in September and October 2004 reduced their convictions by 62 per cent. over their first 17 months on the programme.

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|Year (April to March)|Number of PPOs|
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|2005-06              |17,007        |
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|2006-07              |15,221        |
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|2007-08              |15,904        |
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|2008-09              |15,126        |
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