Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the recidivism rates for female prisoners who received (a) custodial prison sentences and (b) community supervision orders was by offence category as used in his Department's offender management statistics in each year since 2010.

The reoffending rates for adult females released from custody and starting community orders by index offence between January 2010 and March 2016 can be found in the attached table.

Please note that the index offence categories in the attached tables are the same as the prison population tables, not the community order offence categories in the probation tables, in the offender management statistics.

There are no clear trends for the reoffending rates of women released from prison or starting community orders broken down by index offence categories. Any large fluctuations seen in the data are due to the small number of offenders in the individual three month cohorts.

We plan to set out a strategy for female offenders in due course, to improve outcomes and services for women in both the community and custody.