Staggering re-offending statistics

Posted October 28, 2011

In Offender Rehabilitation, Prison, Roma's Blog

The government should take note when Mothers Against Murder and Aggression rightly say “there is no point in someone being locked up for six weeks and then released with the same issues and lifestyle because they just reoffend” (‘Repeat offenders who won’t reform commit half a million crimes’ Oct 27).

This week’s staggering statistics show almost half of prisoners released in 2009 re-offend within a year. They demonstrate that while our politicians obsess over the most serious crimes, our criminal justice system’s biggest failure is its counter-productive response to protecting us from more common crimes such as burglary. When there are proven, effective, and much less expensive ways to deal with such offenders in the community, the current Sentencing Bill should hold a presumption against repeating the failed approach of ‘short shocks’ in prison.

overcrowding, re-offending, rehabilitation

Roma Hooper

Roma has worked in and around the criminal justice system since 1992, when she was asked to help set up Britain’s first prison radio station at Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution. She has a Masters in Criminal Justice Policy from the London School of Economics, is Chair of the Griffins Society (supporting women in the criminal justice system), Vice-Chair of the Foundation Training Company (which runs a series of prison and community based resettlement and development programmes) as well as Chair and Founder of the Prison Radio Association. In 2010 she launched Make Justice Work, a campaign to highlight the cost of short-term prison sentences and to improve public confidence in community sentences.