This release examines reoffending behaviour of adult and young offenders who were given Probation Orders and Community Service Orders in 2010, based on crime incident and court conviction data up to the end of 2015.

The rate of reoffending, or recidivism, for offenders referred in 2010 was 37.5%, up 0.2% on findings from the 2009 cohort. The rate of recidivism was higher for males (38.5%) than for females (30.1%), and decreased with increasing age from 62.3% for those aged under 18 on the date of their referral to the Probation Service, to 24.1% for those aged between 45 and 64. The rate of recidivism was higher for those on Probation Orders (40.9%) than for those on Community Service Orders (33.9%). See Table 1.

For the purposes of the release recidivism is defined as an offender committing a further criminal offence (a ‘re-offence’) within a period of three years after their referral to the Probation Service and being subsequently convicted of that offence. The CSO used a matching process to match individuals referred to Probation in 2010 to crime incident and court outcome datasets in order to identify re-offences and re-convictions. Further detail regarding the methods used to measure recidivism in this release is provided in the Background Notes.

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