Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people who (a) were given a non-custodial sentence and (b) were given their first custodial sentence in each year from 2004 had previously had (i) no criminal convictions, (ii) one criminal conviction, (iii) two criminal convictions, (iv) three criminal convictions, (v) four criminal convictions, (vi) five to 10 criminal convictions, (vii) 11 to 20 criminal convictions, (viii) 21 to 30 criminal convictions, (ix) 31 to 40 criminal convictions, (x) 41 to 50 criminal convictions, (xi) 51 to 75, (xii) 76 to 100 criminal convictions and (xiii) more than 100 criminal convictions.

Since 2010, crime has continued to fall and fewer individuals are entering the criminal justice system for the first time. But we have a persistent hardcore of offenders being recycled round and round the criminal justice system, as these figures bear out.

This Government is committed to tackling re-offending rates. We have reformed sentences, so that they combine both punishment and requirements that are effective at preventing further offending. We have legislated so that all community orders must now have a punitive element, and, from 2015, every offender leaving prison spends at least 12 months under supervision, where currently around 50,000 are released each year with no statutory support. We are transforming rehabilitation, by bringing together the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors, and only rewarding them when they actually do reduce reoffending.

Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for our independent judiciary, taking account of the circumstances of the case and the maximum penalty for the offence. A court may only impose a community order or a custodial sentence where the offence is imprisonable. The overwhelming majority of repeat offenders have previously received a number of custodial sentences but the large majority of previous convictions identified in the table below resulted in a fine as they were for summary non-motoring offences.

The number of offenders who were given a non-custodial sentence in each year since 2004, broken down by their number of previous convictions, is given in Table 1. It is important to note that these figures are based only on those offences recorded on the Police National Computer (PNC) by an English or Welsh police force, including the British Transport Police, and include a number of offences for which the maximum sentence available to the court is a fine. It should also be noted that these figures are based on counting the number of separate occasions on which offenders were sentenced in each year and some offenders will therefore be represented several times in the figures.

Table 2 provides a similar breakdown for those offenders who received their first custodial sentence in each year. Again, the figures are drawn from the PNC and will include a number of offences for which the maximum sentence available to the court is a fine. A large proportion of each offender's criminal history is therefore likely to include some offences for which it is not possible to receive a custodial sentence. Of those offenders who had between 76 and 100 previous convictions between the 12 months ending September 2004 and the 12 months ending September 2013, 84% of the disposals for their previous convictions were fines. This increases to 96% when you look at the offenders who had over 100 previous convictions. It should also be noted that these figures are based on counting the number of separate occasions on which offenders were sentenced in each year and some offenders could therefore be represented several times in the figures.

The number of offenders who have received at least one previous conviction, or indeed multiple previous convictions, before receiving their first custodial sentence has decreased under this Government.