Crime and Disorder – By Numbers
- 153 – size of the prison population in Britain expressed as inmates per 100,000 population. (the highest in Western Europe)
- £40,000 – the cost per inmate per year to keep them locked up.
- 40% – the typical re-offending rates once released from prison.
- 80,000 – the size of the prison population in England and Wales.
The Probation Service is an integral part of the Criminal Justice System. It supervises offenders who have been imprisoned and those given a community punishment instead of prison. According to its website, each year the service supervises 175,000 offenders. It assists magistrates and judges in their sentencing decisions through the provision of about 246,000 pre-sentence reports and 20,000 bail information reports. It supervises 8 million hours of unpaid work by offenders in local communities and provides supervision programmes designed to reduce re-offending. [1]
When there are less people to deal with an increasing workload, cracks are bound to show. This was illustrated horrifically by the murder of two French students in London by Dano Sonnex, who was being supervised by a newly qualified Probation Officer who had a caseload of 127 offenders — compared with an average of 37.7 cases per probation officer across London. [2]
It is well-known that in times of economic hardship crime tends to rise; therefore it would be financial madness to shrink an organisation that deals with people who have committed crime.
There are no quick fixes. I believe that we need to look at the causes of crime. We need to rebuild our communities. We need to give young people the skills, jobs and training they need. We need to solve the drugs problem that leads to all this crime. I don’t think we can afford to carry on like this.
[1] http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/output/page2.asp
[2] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6433747.ece