Is re-offending at a record high?

"The number of hardened criminals who re-offend after leaving jail has hit a record high."

Daily Star, 25 May 2012

The success or otherwise of the penal system in reforming criminals is a source of perennial controversy, and Full Fact has looked at claims on the efficacy of prison and community sentences on more than one occassion.

Today the Daily Star returned to the topic to claim that re-offending is at a "record high".

Is this true?

What does the Star mean by re-offending?

As we get further into its article, we can see the Star's justification for its claim. According to the paper:

"Almost a third of thugs convicted of serious offences last year had 15 or more previous convictions or cautions. It is the worst rate since 2001, when just under 18% of those convicted in crown court [sic] had a criminal record with 15 offences or more."

To back this up, the Star points to Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures.

What do the figures say?

The MoJ released its most recent Criminal Justice Statistics on 24 May, and the report covers the 2011 year.

The following can be found at the bottom of page 12:

"10.1 per cent of offenders convicted of indictable offences in 2011 had no previous criminal offences. 31.2 per cent had 15 or more previous offences, a proportion which has grown year on year over the last decade — the 2011 proportion representing an increase of 13.3 percentage points since 2001."

This would seem to support the Star's take on the story, as the 13.3 percentage point rise to to 31.2 per cent of offenders with 15 or more previous offences to their name between 2001 and 2011 suggests a baseline of around 18 per cent.

This also helps define what the Daily Star meant by "serious offences". 'Seriousness' is something which can't easily be objectively defined, but the passage makes it clear that the figure applies to indictable offences.

These are offences which must be tried at the Crown Court. This distinguishes them from summary offences, which are tried at the Magistrates Court (triable either way offences can go to either).

Does this mean we have 'record re-offending'?

However the Star and the MoJ report only compare the proportion of offenders with 15 previous convictions in 2011 with the level in 2001 - it doesn't necessarily mean that "the number of hardened criminals who re-offend after leaving jail has hit a record high."

To answer that question we need to look at the Ministry of Justice's offending history data, which record this over time.

As the graph below shows, it is certainly true that the current proportion of offenders with 15 or more previous convictions was higher in 2011 than at any point over the previous decade:

This isn't the same thing as the number of offenders with such long criminal records, but when we check the data we can see that the number of offenders convicted of indictable crimes has not changed sufficiently over this period to maek what the Star says inaccurate. 

Conclusion

The Daily Star's claim that "the number of hardened criminals who re-offend after leaving jail has hit a record high" is correct, as long as we understand 'hardened criminals' as those with 15 or more convictions, and limit the analysis to the decade between 2001 and 2011 for which there is data.

This is perhaps a distinction that isn't clear from the headline - "Re-offenders are at record high" - as the overall reoffending rate is something different. When we've looked at this in the past we've found that by most measures re-offending rates were actually falling.

With these caveats duly applied however, there is little wrong with the Star's take on the topic.