PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Sexual Offences: Reoffenders (14 July 2014)

Public protection is at the heart of our Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. The new National Probation Service is responsible for the direct management of those offenders who pose the highest risk of serious harm to the public and who have committed the most serious offences. Offenders who are deemed to pose a medium and low risk are being managed by a Community Rehabilitation Company. Every offender will be risk assessed prior to allocation to any probation provider and also upon leaving prison; this will be reviewed when there are indicators that their risk of serious harm to the public has increased to high.

These questions have been answered using the Ministry of Justice’s published proven re-offending statistics for England and Wales, broken down further by police force area. These statistics are published on a quarterly basis and the latest bulletin on a calendar year basis was published on 31 October 2013. Please note that 2011 is the latest full calendar year for which data are available.

Table 1 presents the one year proven re-offending rates for all adult and juvenile offenders in England and Wales, by police force area, for each year from 2007 to 2011.

Table 2 presents the one year proven re-offending rates for all adult and juvenile offenders cautioned or convicted of sexual offences in England and Wales, by police force area, for each year from 2007 to 2011.

A proven re-offence is defined as any offence committed in a one year follow-up period and receiving a court conviction, caution, reprimand or warning in the one year follow-up. Following this one year period, a further six month waiting period is allowed for cases to progress through the courts.

A large part of the variability in the re-offending rates presented in Tables 1 and 2 reflects the mix of offenders within each Police Force Area and, therefore, comparisons between Police Force Areas should not be made using these raw re-offending rates.

A copy of these tables has been placed in the Library.