Homicide: Reoffenders

(asked on 2nd March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many instances of a Serious Further Offence review of murder have resulted in the perpetrator being (a) charged and (b) convicted where the supervisory agency has been (i) the National Probation Service and (ii) a community rehabilitation company by each geographic area of those community rehabilitation companies in each year since 2014.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 5th March 2020

Serious Further Offences (SFOs) are rare. Less than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are convicted of an SFO; for murder, the proportion will be lower. Nonetheless, every single SFO is taken extremely seriously, and in all cases a review is carried out to identify any necessary actions which need to be taken to improve the management of other cases. As a proportion of the offenders managed by the NPS and CRCs respectively, there is no evidence of a difference between the National Probation Service (NPS) and the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) when it comes to offenders committing murder.

SFO reviews are initiated where the NPS or a CRC notifies HM Prison and Probation Service that an offender under supervision has been charged with an SFO. The number of SFO notifications is not equivalent to the number of SFO convictions in any year. About half of all SFO notifications do not result in SFO convictions. In other cases, after initial notification charges will be dropped or an offender acquitted or an offender convicted of a lesser offence.

Table 1 below shows the number of SFO notifications – that is, cases of an offender under probation supervision charged with an SFO - received between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2019, by SFO offence, where the offender was supervised by (a) the National Probation Service (NPS) and (b) Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC).

Table 1.

2014*

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

SFO Offence

NPS

CRC

NPS

CRC

NPS

CRC

NPS

CRC

NPS

CRC

NPS

CRC

Arson with intent to endanger life

14

1

11

4

16

0

18

2

16

2

19

1

Assault by penetration

17

7

13

17

17

18

18

19

6

9

10

12

Attempt or conspiracy to commit murder

31

15

18

36

22

38

34

51

36

43

31

51

Aggravated Burglary

24

0

22

0

40

1

57

0

35

0

25

1

Causing death by dangerous/careless driving/aggravated vehicle taking

5

0

1

6

5

7

3

7

5

11

10

7

False imprisonment

11

0

9

1

24

1

29

0

17

0

19

2

Firearms offences including possession with intent

19

0

16

2

12

0

15

1

16

1

16

0

Kidnapping

22

1

11

4

12

2

21

1

28

0

23

1

Manslaughter

8

0

1

4

5

8

3

13

4

9

3

5

Murder

56

15

28

41

26

60

49

65

54

78

57

90

Offences under the Explosive Substances Act

0

0

0

0

5

1

2

2

2

0

3

0

Other qualifying sexual offences

26

0

34

2

24

2

33

5

19

2

29

1

Other serious violent offence

1

0

0

1

0

0

2

1

3

0

1

0

Female genital mutilation

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

Other specified offence causing death

0

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Rape

129

43

112

105

118

127

111

131

70

60

60

41

Robbery with firearm

8

0

11

2

8

0

15

0

12

1

10

0

Under 13 sexual offences including rape

20

7

22

12

16

9

15

17

15

8

13

2

Total

391

90

310

238

350

274

425

315

338

224

329

215

Notes for Table 1:

  1. *CRCs were created as part of Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) in June 2014. Therefore, data provided for NPS for 2014 include cases managed by former Probation Trusts prior to TR.
  2. The NPS and CRCs are required to complete automatic reviews on any eligible offender who has been charged with (including attempted or conspiracy to commit offences): murder manslaughter, other specified offences causing death, rape or assault by penetration, or a sexual offence against a child under 13 years of age.
  3. Conditional reviews are completed when an offender has been assessed as high risk of harm during the current sentence (NPS only) or where no risk assessment has been completed.
  4. The data represents SFO charges and not a unique count of offenders.
  5. Not all notifications result in the completion of a review as charges are reduced or dropped. Not every offender charged with a SFO is convicted.
  6. Data Sources and Quality. We have drawn these figures from administrative IT systems which, as with some large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Similarly, the number of SFO reviews completed is not equivalent to the number of SFO convictions in any year.

The Honourable Member may be referring to the Freedom of Information Act response 200121016 on 11 February 2020. However, that response did not show the number of people murdered by offenders under supervision. Rather, it showed the number of SFO reviews completed in each calendar year for 2014 to 2019, where the offender had been charged with murder.

Table 2 shows the total number of SFO reviews completed in 2014 as a whole, the number of reviews completed for those who were charged with murder, and the number of subsequent convictions for murder. Tables 3 and 4 below show the number of offenders being supervised by the NPS and CRC respectively who were charged with murder, where a review was completed in the years 2015, 2016, 2017, and the offender subsequently convicted of murder. We have provided the number of SFO reviews in 2014 as a separate table (Table 2), as Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) created CRCs mid-year and prior to this, Probation Trusts managed the cases.

Table 2

Year

All Reviews (a)

Reviews involving a Charge of Murder (b)

Reviews in (b) that resulted in a Murder conviction (c)

2014

404

71

49

Table 3

Year

All NPS Reviews (a)

NPS Reviews involving a Charge of Murder (b)

Reviews in (b) that resulted in a Murder conviction (c)

2015

291

28

15

2016

281

24

20

2017

362

47

28

Table 4

Year

All CRC Reviews (a)

CRC Reviews involving a Charge of Murder (b)

Reviews in (b) that resulted in a Murder conviction (c)

2015

202

42

24

2016

235

47

26

2017

273

65

39

Notes for Tables 2, 3,4

  1. Conviction data are as at 27 January 2020
  2. Not all SFO notifications result in the completion of a review as charges can be reduced or dropped. Not every offender charged with a SFO is convicted.
  3. The data represent SFO reviews conducted following charge and not a unique count of offenders.
  4. We have not included the three month data relating to 1 January-31 March 2018.
  5. Data Sources and Quality. We have drawn these figures from administrative IT systems which, as with some large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

In October, the Ministry of Justice will publish annual reconviction data, including murder for 2018/19, with an accompanying narrative which also explains the correct interpretation of the figures. The current publication can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/843382/Serious_Further_Offences_-Bulletin.pdf

Tables 2, 3 and 4 provide the number of reviews completed in respect of offenders supervised by the NPS or CRCs who were charged with and subsequently convicted of murder between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2017. We have not provided data specific to individual CRCs as the total figure in some cases amounts to five people or fewer. We consider that we would be in breach of our obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation and / or the Data Protection Act 2018 if we release information that would risk identification of the individuals concerned.

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