Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to reduce trends in the level of serious further offences.

Under 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are charged with a serious further offence in any one year, but we know that each offence has a devastating impact on the victims and their families. We carry out a thorough review into each one to identify whether our practice needs to change for the better management of future cases.

Risk cannot be eliminated entirely. However, every offender released from prison is managed in the community on licence, subject to robust licence conditions designed to address the specific risks which the offender presents. Known sexual and violent offenders are managed under the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). MAPPA are a statutory framework, in which the Prison and Probation Services are required to work together to assess and manage offenders’ risks. Offenders who breach their licence conditions so as to exhibit increased risk are liable to be recalled to custody.

Public protection is our primary concern, and unto that end:

• We have unified the Probation Service and greater focus on quality and outcomes has been placed at the centre the unified Probation Service National Standards and performance framework;

• We have injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year to deliver more robust supervision, reduce caseloads and recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safer. We have recruited a record-breaking 2,500 trainee probation officers over the last two years, and we plan to recruit a further 1,500 by March 2023;

• We are improving information sharing with the Police and Children's Services, investing an extra £5.5 million a year to recruit more probation staff who are specifically responsible for accessing domestic abuse information held by the police, and children’s safeguarding information held by councils;

• We have introduced a new child safeguarding policy framework, setting out clear requirements and best practice to support staff;

• We introduced legislation to clarify and strengthen agencies’ ability to share information on sexual and violent offenders under MAPPA and added a dedicated chapter to the statutory MAPPA guidance on domestic abuse and stalking; and

• We have undertaken a range of activity to strengthen known gaps in risk assessment and management, including improving our required learning, updating and developing guidance documents to support practitioners and providing learning events to enable staff to learn from experts and those with lived experience.