Community Orders
(asked on 22nd March 2023) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of community service hours offenders have completed as part of community sentences in each probation region in England and Wales in each of the last five years.
The table below shows the number of community service hours offenders have completed as a part of community sentences for the period between April 2017 to March 2022, segmented by Probation Region.
Region | 2017/2018 | 2018/2019 | 2019/2020 | 2020/2021 | 2021/2022 | Total |
East Midlands Region | 364,879 | 362,224 | 343,616 | 53,208 | 203,367 | 1,327,294 |
East of England | 626,867 | 598,319 | 561,547 | 334,164 | 502,698 | 2,623,595 |
Greater Manchester | 329,488 | 292,469 | 273,112 | 53,663 | 160,774 | 1,109,505 |
Kent Surrey Sussex Region | 396,484 | 380,379 | 226,610 | 108,546 | 296,240 | 1,408,259 |
London | 849,515 | 848,230 | 730,669 | 153,963 | 462,288 | 3,044,664 |
North East Region | 190,754 | 197,154 | 194,359 | 59,581 | 154,040 | 795,888 |
North West Region | 498,795 | 512,019 | 473,218 | 100,787 | 322,730 | 1,907,550 |
South Central | 305,893 | 298,835 | 281,304 | 89,035 | 235,691 | 1,210,759 |
South West | 333,797 | 353,762 | 327,011 | 87,780 | 295,717 | 1,398,068 |
Wales | 370,215 | 405,205 | 374,047 | 107,297 | 275,242 | 1,532,005 |
West Midlands Region | 548,199 | 515,099 | 479,172 | 90,408 | 298,205 | 1,931,084 |
Yorkshire and The Humber | 551,119 | 516,715 | 491,569 | 98,734 | 335,566 | 1,993,703 |
Unknown Region** | 17,690 | 31,223 | 113,544 | 19,742 | 41,744 | 223,943 |
National Total | 5,383,697 | 5,311,633 | 4,869,778 | 1,356,908 | 3,584,303 | 20,506,318 |
The table above provides the last full five years of community service hours completed by offenders on Unpaid Work requirements.
These have been segmented by Probation Region. Where prior to unification (July 2021), locations have been mapped to current region. Where mapping has not been possible, due to ambiguous locations, these have been grouped as ‘Unknown Region’.
A significant dip in performance can be seen in the years 2019/20 and 2020/21, which is attributed to the pandemic. Community Payback was severely affected by projects, and organisations that provided them, being closed, along with the social distancing rules making it difficult for delivery to continue as normal.