Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the current level of intergenerational transmission of criminal offending, broken down by gender.

Families and friends can be a positive influence on reducing reoffending. Strengthening the ties individuals have with their families and friends is one of the many important factors to successful rehabilitation and reducing intergenerational crime.

The Ministry of Justice is working collaboratively with the Department for Education and the Welsh Government to ensure that effective support is available within the community for children of prisoners to reduce the likelihood of intergenerational offending.

The specific information you have requested is not held centrally by the Ministry of Justice. We do not collect data on the criminal conviction status of the parents or children of those who come into contact with the Criminal Justice System. Therefore, it would not be possible to do any analysis on either the proportion of offenders who had parents with a criminal conviction, or offenders with children who have a conviction.

In the absence of holding this data ourselves, we rely on estimates from research studies, such as the MoJ SPCR survey in 2005/6 which found that 37% of prisoners reported having family members who had been convicted of a non-motoring criminal offence.