Probation Re-offending Statistics 2017

Historically, CSO estimates of re-offending have excluded re-offending court convictions linked to Road and Traffic incidents (RTI’s) which corresponded to equivalent offences managed by the Fixed Notice Act (Penalty points system). In an update to the probation re-offending series and to provide more comprehensive analysis, court convicted offences from incidents relating to RTI’s have now been included as a re-offending indicator to estimate probation re-offending rates for this publication. This change in treatment was also applied to the prisoner re-offending series publication in June this year. The update means that re-offending statistics from reference year 2017¹ onward now include individuals that have received a conviction for re-offending incidents which include RTI related offences. RTI incidents that are solely managed via the penalty points system without a court conviction continue to be excluded as a re-offending indicator. Overall, the update of the inclusion of RTI related incidents has not significantly affected the overall probation re-offending estimates for 2017 when compared to re-offending estimates that do not include these incident types. However, there is a change in the profile of the type of re-offending offence that probation re-offenders are recorded as being linked to. As a result of the change, a higher proportion of re-offenders have been linked to offences related to Road and Traffic related incident types for their 1^st re-offending conviction after receiving a probation order. See Table 3.4.

The Probation Re-offending Statistics publication provides information on the level of recorded re-offending by individuals placed under the management of the Probation Service. The information in this publication primarily relates to individuals who entered the Probation Service in 2017.

The probation re-offending rate is the percentage of individuals issued with a probation order during a reference year who were convicted of any crime incident that was recorded within three years of the date of their probation sentence. The resulting conviction relating to the incident must then be obtained within two years of the date when the incident was recorded.

For example, if an offender was sentenced to probation on December 31st, 2014 and they committed an offence on December 31st, 2017 for which a conviction was obtained on or before December 31st, 2019 they would be included as a re-offender.

¹ To allow for more timely measures of re-offending, one and two year measures of re-offending are also presented in this publication, allowing the analysis to come forward to reference year 2017 (one year for re-offence from end 2017 and a further two years allowed for court conviction brings us to end 2020).

• In 2017, just under one third (29%) of individuals that received a probation order re-offended within a year of receiving the order. See Table 1.1 and Figure 1.1.
• The 1-year probation re-offending rate for 2017 (29%) is broadly similar to the same measure for 2016 (31%) and 2015 (30%). See Table 1.1 and Figure 1.1.
• In the most recent year for which a 3-year re-offending rate is available (2015), 49% of individuals who received a probation order in 2015 committed at least one re-offence for which they received a conviction. See Table 1.1 and Figure 1.1.
• Males (28%) that received a probation order in 2017 were marginally more likely to re-offend within a year of receiving a probation than females (27%). See Table 3.1.
• Individuals who receive probation orders tend to re-offend less when they are older, with just 8% of over 65’s re-offending within a year of receiving probation. In contrast, 42% of under 18’s who received probation in 2017 re-offended within a year. See Table 3.1.
• In 2017, the highest number of probation orders were issued to individuals who committed offences related to Theft and related offences (971 persons). This category contained the 3rd highest one year re-offending rate with 35% of individuals (344) re-offending. Offences related to Public Order and other social code offences had the highest level of 1-year re-offending where 38% of individuals (203 in total) re-offending within a year. See Table 3.1.

Chapter 2 of this publication, FAQ, provides explanations of the key concepts of the release. Chapter 3 provides a more detailed analysis of re-offending rates for 2017. Chapter 4, Background Notes, provides technical explanations and a table of the incident classifications used in the publication.

The PX Stat tables are available here.