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Probation: Community Orders

Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effect on Probation Service resources of an increase in the use of community penalties by magistrates' courts. [195665]

Maria Eagle: There is no simple relationship between the number of community penalties passed and their resource impact upon the probation service. The cost of community penalties is related to the number of such sentences, the risk profile of the offenders made subject to them, the number and nature of requirements included in them and their length. The impact of any rise varies with other changes in the mix of probation workload, such as the number of reports to be prepared and the number of offenders to be supervised on release from custody.

New community penalties to be supervised by the probation service rose by 5 per cent. between September 2006 and September 2007. The caseload of such cases under supervision at any one time rose by 3 per cent. over the same period.

An additional £40 million has recently been made available to the probation service for the specific purpose of supporting local plans to promote confidence in the use of community penalties.

Protection from Harassment Act 1997

James Brokenshire: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many (a) arrests, (b) prosecutions and (c) convictions there were for offences under (i) the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and (ii) the Malicious Communications Act 1988 in each of the last 10 years. [195647]

Maria Eagle: The arrests collection undertaken by the Ministry of Justice provides data on persons arrested for recorded crime (notifiable offences) only, by age group, gender, ethnicity, and main offence group, i.e. violence against the person, sexual offences, robbery, burglary, etc. It is not possible to separately identify specific offences from within the main offence groups.

The number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for offences under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988 can in England and Wales for the years 1997 to 2006 be viewed in the following table.


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N umber of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for offences under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988 in England and Wales for the years 1997 to 2006( 1,2,3,4)
Statute
Protection from Harassment Act 1997 Malicious Communications Act 1988 S.1 (l)(a),1(1)(b)
Proceeded against Found guilty Proceeded against Found guilty

1997

780

344

0

0

1998

6,189

3,031

0

0

1999

7,758

3,671

0

0

2000(5)

8,162

3,940

0

0

2001

7,936

3,792

0

0

2002

7,955

3,976

66

38

2003

8,084

4,234

78

47

2004

8,148

4,675

99

64

2005

8,108

5,185

122

73

2006

7,805

5,333

182

121

(1) These data are on the principal offence basis.
(2) The data relates to the following Statutes and offence descriptions:
Malicious Communications Act S.l(l)(a), and 1(1 )(b):
Sending letter or other article conveying indecent or grossly offensive message
Sending letter or other article conveying threat
Sending letter or other article conveying false information
Sending article which is in whole or in part indecent or grossly offensive
Protection from Harassment Act 1997 S.2(l) and (2), 3(6), 4(1), and 5(5):
Infringing the terms of an injunction which restrains the offender from harassment
Putting a person in fear of violence
Breach of a restraining order under the Act
Harassment of another
(3) The data excludes racially and or religiously aggravated harassment offences as covered by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
(4) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.
(5) Staffordshire police force were only able to submit sample data for persons proceeded against and convicted in the magistrates courts for the year 2000.
Note:
Although sufficient to estimate higher orders of data, these data are not robust enough at a detailed level and have been excluded from the table.
Source:
Court proceedings data held by RDS—Office for Criminal Justice Reform—Ministry of Justice

Court proceedings data for 2007 will be available in the autumn of 2008.

Reoffenders: Secure Accommodation

Jenny Willott: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) what proportion of (a) juveniles and (b) young adult offenders were reconvicted within two years of release from secure children's homes in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement; [196132]

(2) what proportion of (a) juvenile and (b) young adult offenders were reconvicted within two years of release from secure training centres in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement; [196133]

(3) what proportion of (a) juvenile and (b) young adult offenders were reconvicted within two years of release from young offenders institutions in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement. [196134]

Mr. Hanson: Young adult offenders are not placed in secure training centres or secure children's homes. The Ministry of Justice statistical bulletin ‘Re-offending of Juveniles: results from the 2005 cohort’ (July 2007) found that 76 per cent. of young people aged under 18 discharged from custody in the first quarter of 2005 re-offended within a year. It analysed the figures in various ways: for example by age, by ethnicity and by offence sanctioned. However, there would be difficulty in attempting such an analysis by type of custodial establishment, because transfers occur between different types of establishment and the number of offenders given custodial sentences is very small compared to other disposals.

Robbery: Sentencing

Jenny Willott: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what changes were made to the sentencing guidelines for (a) magistrates and (b) Crown courts on robbery offences in each of the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement. [196122]

Mr. Hanson: Robbery is an indictable only offence and therefore is not dealt with in the magistrates courts.

In July 2006, the Sentencing Guidelines Council issued a guideline on robbery. In December 2004, the Council issued guidelines on seriousness,

which apply in all cases, including robbery. The latter guideline was revised in July 2007.

Segregation of Prisoners

Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prisoners were housed in segregation units in each of the last (a) five years and (b) 12 months. [195804]

Maria Eagle: The information requested is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost, by surveying every establishment in England and Wales.

Vandalism: South Yorkshire

Jeff Ennis: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many (a) arrests, (b) prosecutions and (c) convictions there were for vandalism in (i) Barnsley East and Mexborough constituency, (ii) Barnsley Metropolitan borough and (iii) Doncaster metropolitan borough in each year since 2002. [195760]

Maria Eagle: The arrests collection undertaken by the Ministry of Justice provides data on persons arrested for recorded crime (notifiable offences), by age group, gender, ethnicity, and main offence group. Information is given in table 1 for South Yorkshire police force area for the number of persons arrested for offences within the main offence group ‘criminal damage’.


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Table 1: N umber of persons arrested for recorded crime (notifiable offences) of criminal damage( 1) in South Yorkshire police force area, by period
Period Total

2001-02

3,523

2002-03

3,937

2003-04

4,138

2004-05

4,882

2005-06

4,936

(1) Includes indictable offences for criminal damage and summary offences of criminal damage, £5,000 or less.
Note:
Every effort is made to ensure that figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

Data for the same area showing the number of defendants proceeded against and found guilty of criminal damage, which includes cases involving vandalism, are given in the following table.

Data are not available at parliamentary constituency or metropolitan borough level and cases involving vandalism cannot be separately identified from the arrests and court proceedings data held by my Department.

Data for the same area showing the number of defendants proceeded against and found guilty of criminal damage, which includes cases involving vandalism, are given in the following table.

Data are not available at parliamentary constituency or metropolitan borough level and cases involving vandalism cannot be separately identified from the arrests and court proceedings data held by my Department.

Table 2: Number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts of criminal damage( 1) in South Yorkshire police force area, 2002 - 06( 2, 3)
Proceeded against Found guilty

2002

1,765

1,121

2003

1,876

1,164

2004

1,800

1,242

2005

1,831

1,353

2006

1,700

1,251

(1) Includes indictable offences for criminal damage and summary offences of criminal damage, £5,000 or less, and in addition offences under section 19 of the Allotments Act 1922.
(2) These data are on the principal offence basis.
(3) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

Young Offenders

Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many persistent young offenders are registered; and how many and what proportion of total offences there were in which the offender was a persistent young offender in each police force area in England and Wales in each year since 1997. [195605]

Mr. Hanson: Statistics on Persistent Young Offenders (PYOs) are available from 1997 to 2007.
26 Mar 2008 : Column 244W
These figures are derived from police national computer data, and monitor the pledge to halve the average time from arrest to sentence for dealing with PYOs in England and Wales from 142 days in 1996 to 71 days.

The following table shows the number of PYOs in England and Wales in each year since 1997. It also shows the number of cases involving such offenders and the average time from arrest to sentence for dealing with them. Data in this table are published as national statistics by the Ministry of Justice.

Key statistics on persistent young offenders (PYO), 1997 to 2007
Number of PYOs Number of PYO convictions Arrest to sentence interval (days)

1997

9,868

16,010

141

1998

11,079

18,605

125

1999

12,014

21,151

108

2000

13,094

23,130

93

2001

13,854

25,393

76

2002

14,244

26,116

68

2003

14,242

26,083

66

2004

14,403

26,363

69

2005

14,725

27,037

68

2006

15,528

28,252

72

2007

16,512

30,683

65

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