Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prisoners found work within six months of their release in each year since 2010.

We know that finding employment in the year after release makes offenders less likely to reoffend, by up to nine percentage points. Getting ex-offenders into work is critical to the Government’s work to break the cycle of reoffending. That is why in our manifesto, this Government committed to improve access to purposeful activity, including learning, and to support prisons to link with employers and the voluntary sector to support ex-offenders into work.

Information on the number and proportion of prison leavers employed at 6 months post release is available from April 2020. The most recent figures were published on 25 July 2024 in the Offender Employment Outcomes Update to March 2024 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-employment-outcomes-update-to-march-2024.

The proportion of prison leavers in jobs within six months of their release more than doubled across the past three performance years, from 14% in 2020/21 to 31% in 2023/24.