Statistics on the UK Criminal Justice System

Facts and Figures

Facts and Figures

  • Court ordered community sentences are more effective (by eight percentage points) at reducing one-year proven reoffending rates than custodial sentences of less than 12 months for similar offenders.
  • The cost of a six week stay in prison is £4,500 and during that time many prisoners undertake no education or rehabilitative work. The cost of a high intensity two year community order, containing 80 hours of unpaid work and mandatory accredited programmes was £4,200. Shorter community sentences cost much less.
  • Prisoners with short sentences (ie less than 12 months)  have on average 16 previous convictions (National Audit Office NAO)
  • 60% of short term prisons on short sentences are convicted of at least one offence in the year they are released (NAO)
  •  In 2007-2008 reoffending by recent ‘ex offenders’ cost between £9.5 and £13 billion (NAO)
  • Emerging evidence from intensive alternative to custody, suggests it is possible to design ‘tough’ communtiy sentences with higher expected compliance rates. Compliance across the pilots was 56%, with 67% in Liverpool.
  • On November 2 2012, the prison population in England and Wales was 85, 450. In 1992-93, the average prison population was 44,628.
  • England and Wales has an imprisonment rate of 153 per 100,000 of the population. France has an imprisonment rate of 102 per 100,000 and Germany has a rate of 83 per 100,000.
  • Between 2001 and 2011, the prison population in England and Wales grew by 19,650 or 30%. A rise in the number of people sentenced to immediate custody accounts for 65% of the increase.
  • In the last 11 years the nuber of those sentenced to immediate custody has increased but the number of those appearing before the court has remained stable.
  • At the end of September 2012, 81 of the 131 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded.
  • The number of women in prison has increased by 85% over the past 15 years (1996-2011). On 2 Noember 2012, the women’s prison population stood at 4,141.
  • The overall cost of the criminal justice system is 2.3% of GDP, this is higher than the US or any EU country. Spending on public order and safety has grown rapidly, at an average annual real rate of 4.6% between 2000–01 and 2008–09.
  • The average annual overall cost of a prison place in England and Wales for financial year 2010-11 is £39,573. This includes prison related costs met by the National Offender Management Service, but excludes expenditure met by other government departments such as health and education.

All statistics are from Prison Reform Trust’s ‘Bromley Briefing Factfile November 2012′.

 

 

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