Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of people given Community Payback as a community sentence did not complete the work assigned to them in each year since 2014.

The Government is investing an additional £93m in Community Payback over three years. This will allow us to increase delivery of Community Payback back to pre-covid levels of delivery.

We have launched a national campaign to recruit more than 500 additional Community Payback staff to bolster resources in every probation region and new staff are arriving in post. The additional staffing will enable us to boost delivery of Community Payback to pre-covid levels.

There will be a particular focus on delivering more outdoor projects that improve local areas, sustainability focussed and allow the public to see justice being done.

The table below shows how many Community Payback requirements and the proportion that were not completed in each year since 2014. The data covers all reasons why Community Payback requirements may not have been completed including offender deaths, deportation, orders revoked and resentenced, successful appeals and Suspended Sentence Order (SSO) activated (i.e. offender imprisoned for the remainder of their sentence).

Data as of 7 March 2024.

Please note these data relate to Community Payback requirements, not individuals or hours. An individual may have had multiple Community Payback requirements across the time period and all of these have been counted separately. It is important to note that some of those incomplete Community Payback requirements may have a number of hours completed.

Owing to the amalgamation of multiple legacy IT systems, with the introduction of Transforming Rehabilitation back in 2014, a slightly different methodology has been utilised to identify those cases where Community Payback had not been completed, in the years 2014 and 2015. This has been utilised to ensure that data are accurate, representative and consistent across the period shown.

The year listed is when the Community Payback requirement was terminated.

Data are sourced from nDelius and while these data have been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset, the data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last value presented.