Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of community sentences were completed (a) successfully and (b) unsuccessfully due to (i) the committal of an additional offence and (ii) a breach of sentence stipulations in each of the last five years.

We have increased funding for the Probation Service by an additional £155m a year to recruit staff and to deliver better and more consistent supervision of offenders in the community. The data shows that since 2018, the proportion of successfully completed community sentences has increased from 70% to 74%. Please find the full dataset requested in the accompanying table.

Delivering public protection and cutting crime is not just about custody. There is persuasive evidence that suspended and community sentences are more effective than short custodial sentences in reducing reoffending and promoting rehabilitation. Community sentences can include a range of robust requirements to punish the offender, protect the public and deliver rehabilitation. Electronic monitoring of curfews, exclusion zones, attendance at appointments, location monitoring and alcohol bans are all available requirements which the courts can use. Courts can also impose up to 300 hours of unpaid work to make sure that offenders are visibly and publicly making reparations for their crimes. Any breach of these requirements could see them returned to court and face immediate custody.

Please note that where there is a significant risk of harm to an individual or where the offender has breached an order of the court, the courts will retain full discretion to impose a sentence of immediate custody.

Data sources and quality:

The figures in this table have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Source:

National Delius case management system.