Prisoner re-offending costs £10 billion a year

The majority of thieves and violent criminals who receive a custodial sentence of less than 12 months go on to re-offend within a year of their release, the public spending watchdog has found.

This re-offending costs the taxpayer an estimated £10 billion – or £400 for every household – each year, the National Audit Office (NAO), which vets and monitors public spending, said.

The NAO says too little is being done to tackle the problem, which is linked to the criminality of around 60,000 offenders in the prison system who are given sentences of less than 12 months.

In most cases they are given terms of less than less than six months which means in practice they are freed after serving a few weeks of their jail term, because they are automatically released after serving half their sentence.

The NAO found that 60 per cent of these offenders went on to commit further offences after their release from prison.

While £300 million is spent keeping the 60,000 short-term inmates in England and Wales secure, safe and well, prisons are struggling to meet their needs, the report says. Most have a longer criminal history than any other single group of prisoners: the average is 16 previous convictions each. They also experience high levels of homelessness, joblessness and drug and alcohol problems once they are released into society.

Auditors added that overcrowding and constraints on physical space mean that there are not enough activity spaces for all, problems compounded by the long waiting lists for courses that tackle the offending behaviour of those in prison.

It said attempts to tackle this crime wave were “ineffectual” with “limited and inconsistent” efforts to link offenders with services in the community when they leave prison.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee which oversees the work of the NAO, said the report showed the short jail terms served “little purpose over and above taking the offenders in question out of the community for a short time”.

He continued: “Only a tiny proportion of prison budgets is spent on activities to rehabilitate offenders serving short prison sentences.

“The uncomfortable truth is that they are not working, studying or doing almost anything constructive with their time. Indeed, half of then them spend all day, every day sitting in their cells.”

He added: “These prisoners’ re-offending costs society up to £10billion a year. So the imperative to tackle this criminality is based on financial sense as well as the need to make our communities safer and happier places to live.”

A Prison Service spokesman said the report showed that “prison is not always the right answer for less serious offenders”.

He said: “We will always provide enough prison places for serious offenders, those who should be behind bars: the most dangerous, the seriously persistent offenders, and the most violent.

“Prison is the right place for such people. [But] in some of these cases a tough community sentence can be more effective than a short prison sentence - more effective in terms of rehabilitating offenders, turning them away from crime and therefore giving greater protection to the public.”