Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of reoffending.

A reduction in reoffending rates can only be achieved by a concerted effort across government on the drivers of reoffending such as homelessness, unemployment, addiction, health, care and social exclusion. This is why the MoJ is working with other departments to tackle the main causes of reoffending. We are committed to tackling reoffending by investing in community provision, strengthening alternatives to short custodial sentences and boosting rehabilitation, so that it keeps the public safe and ultimately reforms and rehabilitates offenders.

The current estimate of the economic and social cost of reoffending is approximately £15bn per annum, including the cost to victims, and the cost to the Government of detecting, prosecuting, and punishing the crime. This was based on a report published by the National Audit Office (NAO), which estimated in 2007/08 that reoffending by recent ex-prisoners cost between £9.5billion and £13billion; this report can be found here:

https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/0910431.pdf

This estimate was calculated by taking the figure of £13bn and increasing it by inflation, to bring it into present-day costs at the time of calculation (2016/17). This was done by applying GDP deflators in line with standard Green Book guidance.