Prisoner re-offending costs economy £10bn annually

Prisoner re-offending costs economy £10bn annually

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



The cost of this reoffending to the economy is £10billion a year – or £400 for every household in the UK, the National Audit Office, which vets and monitors public spending, said.

Around 60,000 offenders a year are jailed for less than 12 months – mostly for theft and violent crime - costing £286million a year to keep them in prison, the NAO said.

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.

Government 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, the report said.

The NAO found that on average these offenders had 16 previous convictions, and 60 per cent went on to commit another offence within a year of their release.