Alternatives to Prison

(asked on 16th May 2018) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people in England and Wales were the subject of a (a) probation supervision order and (b) community service order in each of the last five years; and how many of those people had previously served in the Armed Forces.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 29th May 2018

Statistics on the overall number of offenders supervised on community orders and suspended sentence orders can be found in Offender management statistics quarterly: October to December 2017 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2017 (Probation: 2017, table A4.7)

In 2016, the National Probation Service began recording whether an offender had served in the Armed Forces on an Equality Information Form. This information will help to build a better picture of accurate numbers of military offenders and will enable probation services to tailor rehabilitative work and support to their needs. At present it is too early make an accurate assessment, and information on the current numbers could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

We continue to work in partnership with armed forces charities and organisations who have the skills to work with ex-armed service personnel who are entering or leaving custody or are supervised in the community. All offenders, including those with a military background are assessed at the initial point of contact and have access to a range of programmes or interventions.

A Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice data matching exercise in 2010 estimated that 5,860 offenders who were under probation supervision had a military background.

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