Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of people released from prison went on to reoffend, what number of reoffences were committed on average, what was the total number of reoffences, and what was the total number of reoffenders by custodial sentence length for (1) men, and (2) women, for the most recent year that figures are available.

This Government is committed to tackling the causes of reoffending to keep our communities safe. Between 2010/11 and 2020/21, the overall proven reoffending rate decreased from 31.6% to 24.4%.

Helping prison leavers to secure accommodation, employment, and substance misuse treatment on release is essential for rehabilitation and can significantly reduce their likelihood of reoffending. We are therefore investing in a range of interventions including delivering our temporary accommodation service so that prison-leavers have a stable base on release, offering more offenders the chance to work in prison and expanding the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living wings so that we can support prisoners off drugs and into recovery.

Further, we are seeking to introduce a presumption against short sentences which we know have significantly higher reoffending rates than suspended and community sentences.

The answer can be found in the tables below.

Table 1: Reoffending rate, number of reoffences and average number of reoffences per reoffender for offenders released from custody, male and female (adult), April 2020 – March 2021.

Table 2: Number of reoffenders by custodial sentence length, male (adult), April 2020 – March 2021

Table 3: Number of reoffenders by custodial sentence length, female (adult), April 2020 – March 2021

[Note 1] 'Other life' category includes discretionary and automatic life sentences.