Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) community or (b) equivalent orders each offender sent to prison in each of the last three years for less than 12 months had previously been given.

There is persuasive evidence that short custodial sentences do not work in terms of rehabilitation and that community sentences, in certain circumstances, are more effective in reducing reoffending, and therefore keeping the public safe. The MoJ study ‘The impact of short custodial sentences, community orders and suspended sentence orders on re-offending’ published in 2015 found that over a 1-year follow up period, a higher proportion of people re-offended having been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of under 12 months without supervision on release than other similar people given community orders (around 3 percentage points).

From centrally held data it is not possible to separately identify how many community or equivalent orders each offender sent to prison in each of the last three years for less than 12 months had previously been given, without incurring disproportionate cost.