Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

16. What the reoffending rates were for those sentenced to jail terms of (a) one year, (b) five years and (c) 10 years in the latest period for which figures are available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

In 2008, the rate of reconviction within one year for adults discharged from custody after a sentence of less than a year was 61.1%; it was 31.0% for those given sentences of one to five years, 17.5% for offenders given sentences of five to 10 years, and 6.4% for 10 years or more. The Government’s Green Paper on rehabilitation and sentencing sets out our proposals to punish and rehabilitate offenders.

[Mr Hollobone]

Does the Minister agree that the figures suggest that prison actually works, and that the longer prisoners spend in prison the greater the chance of ensuring their effective rehabilitation before being released?

[Mr Blunt]

That is why we have to address the appalling reoffending rates of those people sentenced to short terms in prison. There were 60,000 of those in the past year, and I am afraid that the option of sending them all to prison for 10 years does not exist, so we have to make a success of rehabilitation. We have to ensure that longer sentences are given to recidivist offenders and that we effectively rehabilitate people and break the cycle of crime through the proposals that we have presented in the Green Paper to drive that number down.