The Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s announcement last week that the Coalition Government would seek to make greater use of community sentences in place of prison terms for convicted criminals has reignited the debate surrounding the rehabilitation of felons.

 

Former Home Secretary Michael Howard even broke party shackles to speak out against the proposals.

 

At the heart of the debate is the issue of criminal reoffending rates; the basis of Mr Howard’s famous claim in 1993 that “prison works”.

 

But can the same be said today? Full Fact probes an argument brewing on reoffending rates under the previous Labour Government.

 

 

Defending the last Government’s record on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, the previous – now Shadow - Home Secretary Alan Johnson said: “[Rehabilitation work] has led to a reduction in crime and a reduction in reoffending.”

 

“There isn’t a big argument on the numbers, reoffending rates went down [under the Labour Government], 20% down for adults.” He added.

 

However the argument may be bigger than Mr Johnson’s assertion would seem to acknowledge. Speaking last week, another former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis claimed that ‘the reoffending rate in prisons has gone up’.

 

With others offering such divergent views on reoffending, can Mr Johnson claim that there is no debate to be had, and is his use of the statistics accurate?

 

 

It is worth noting from the outset that there is scope for both Mr Johnson and Mr Davis to be correct.

 

Whilst Mr Johnson is speaking of changes in the reoffending rate since 1997, Mr Davis does not give a timeframe for his claim. Full Fact contacted Mr Davis’s office for clarification, and is awaiting a response.

 

This is particularly pertinent, as the latest Ministry of Justice figures could conceivably justify both parties. Whilst recording a downward trend in reoffending rates since 2000, when the current measures began to be recorded, the statistics do also note an increase over the last two years.

 

However these statistics do not necessarily tell the whole story.

 

The methodology used for measuring reoffending rates by the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office before it has changed substantially since 1997, making direct comparisons difficult.

 

Annual monitoring of prisoner reoffending was only begun in 2000 as part of a Government review of crime reporting. Furthermore the ‘headline’ data used to monitor reoffending has changed in line with spending reviews in 2002 and 2006. Whilst this year’s figures use the average number of crimes committed by every 100 released prisoners, older reports measured purely the number of individuals caught committing crimes after release.

 

The picture is further complicated by which timeframe is used to calculate the headline figure. Whilst 1997 reoffending rates measure convictions made up to two years after the release of the prisoner, the most recent report includes crimes committed over four years after release, as well as those committed whilst in custody.

 

Home Office reoffending figures note that in 1997 the rate stood at 53.1 per cent, which compares to 49.2 per cent in 2008.

 

However the report also notes: “Owing to the change from the counting of re-conviction to re-offending, the [1997] figures should be seen as provisional and cannot accurately be compared with the figures in the rest of the report.”

 

Nevertheless, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson told Full Fact that these changes shouldn’t obscure the wider trends.

 

He said: “There is a certain amount of modelling of the older data involved in fitting it to the new figures, but we think this has been done accurately.”

 

“The measures have become more sophisticated over the years, but individual indicators can still reveal trends begun in 1997 or before,” he added.

 

This goes someway to explain the diversity of claims made for reoffending rates. By focusing on those criminals on short-term sentences, Ken Clarke can legitimately point to 60 per cent reoffending rates within one year of release, even though this figure is significantly higher than the overall rate. The probation officers' union, Napo has likewise suggested that over two years, the number rises to 74 per cent.

 

Similarly, the rise in reoffending rates seen between 2006 and 2008 could justify David Davis’s claim, as could the increase in the number of proven convictions by reoffenders since 2000 from 79,043 to 83,516, even though the proportion of reoffenders has fallen.

 

 

Alan Johnson can therefore quite legitimately point to a reduction in reoffending rates over the term of his party’s tenure in Government, although due to the changes in methodology, it is harder to verify the 20 per cent figure he cites.

 

However rises in individual measures of reoffending, such as amongst those on short sentences, and an increase in the overall rate over the last two years justifiably highlighted by others make Mr Johnson’s claim that there is ‘no argument’ far more questionable.