Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many female offenders who have received more than one custodial sentence since 2010 were unemployed when they re-offended.

We do not hold the data as requested, but we do know that offenders who find employment on release from prison are less likely to reoffend than those who do not.

Offenders who found P45 employment in the twelve months after release from prison had one year re-offending rates that were 6-9 percentage points lower than similar offenders who did not find employment.

In order to improve employment opportunities for ex-offenders, we published the Education and Employment strategy last year to set each prisoner on a path to employment from the outset, thus increasing access to employment for ex-offenders.