The Offender Assessment System
Last week (12 June 2025), the MoJ published an updated set of official statistics setting out the Identified needs of offenders, both in custody and in the community, as of 31 October 2024. It is based primarily on information from the Offender Assessment System (OASys) and sets out identified needs with analysis structured by gender, age and sentence type. Further breakdowns are included, examining:
Changes in identified needs over time
Identified needs by ethnic background
Common combinations of identified needs
Number of identified needs per offender
Identified needs
The chart I’ve reproduced below shows the overall rates of identified needs, for those with an OASys Layer 3 on 31 October 2024 comparing the custody and community caseloads overall.
Of those with a Layer 3, people in custody had higher rates of identified needs across eight out of the nine need areas. The largest difference was seen in those with an identified accommodation need (68% for those in custody, compared to 39% for those in the community).
Lifestyle and associates need was identified most commonly in both custody (89%) and community (71%). This OASys section includes issues such as reckless and risk-taking behaviour, being influenced by criminal peers, and having lifestyle, associates or conducting in activities that encourage offending.
For both custody and community, alcohol misuse was the least identified need out of the nine need areas: 22% of people in custody and 24% of people in the community were identified as having an alcohol misuse need. Alcohol misuse was the only need identified more often in the community than in custody.
Custody caseload
Identified needs for people in custody varied by the type of sentence they were serving. People with a Layer 3, serving determinate sentences of less than 12 months, tended to have higher rates of identified needs than people serving longer determinate sentences.
The most prominent difference, by sentence length, was in drug misuse need where 74% of those serving sentences of less than 12 months had an identified drug misuse need, compared to 42% of those serving a sentence of 4 years or more.
Note that people serving determinate sentences of 12 months or less and 1 to under 4 years had lower rates of coverage at 80% and 73%, respectively. This is compared to 94% coverage for people serving sentences of 4 years or more and will affect how representative comparisons are.
Life sentences
People serving life sentences, with a Layer 3, had the lowest rates of identified alcohol misuse need; 11% compared to 22% of the custody caseload.
IPP sentences
People serving IPP sentence had the highest rate of identified need in four out of the nine needs areas, when compared to all other custodial sentence types: relationships (96%), thinking and behaviour (94%), accommodation (85%) and employability (83%).
Recall
People on recall, with a Layer 3, had the highest level of identified lifestyle and associates (95%) and attitudes (95%) need. Those on recall had higher identification of all needs than those serving 1 to under 4 years, over 4 years + determinate and life sentences. The identification of accommodation, employability, relationships and attitudes needs in recall prisoners is at least 10 percentage points higher than those with 1 to under 4-year sentences. Only drug misuse, alcohol misuse and mental health needs were identified more often in sentences of less than 12 months than in recall prisoners.
Community caseload
Again, levels of need varied by sentence type.
For six of the nine need areas, for people with a Layer 3, rates of need were higher for people on licence than those on community orders and suspended sentences:
Lifestyle and associates need was identified in 78% of offenders on licence compared to identification in 68% of offenders on suspended sentence orders
Attitudes need was identified in 71% of offenders on licence compared to identification in 62% of offenders on community orders
Employability need was identified in 55% of offenders on licence compared to identification in 39% of offenders on community orders
Accommodation need was identified in 45% of offenders on licence compared to identification in 36% of offenders on community orders
Drug Misuse need was identified in 43% of offenders on licence compared to identification in 38% of offenders on community orders
Thinking and Behaviour need was identified in 66% of offenders on licence compared to identification in 63% of offenders on community orders
The mental health and alcohol misuse needs were more commonly identified in those serving community orders (68% and 32% respectively) or suspended sentence orders (64% and 24% respectively) than those on licence (55% and 18% respectively).
Experience of domestic abuse
In custody, 68% of females were identified as victims of domestic abuse, compared with 10% of males. The proportion of males and females in custody identified as victims of domestic abuse varies by sentence type:
Females on recall and those on determinate sentences of less than 12 months were identified most often as having experienced domestic abuse as a victim (78%), compared to 56% of females with life sentences.
Males on recall and determinate sentences of less than 12 months were identified most often as having experienced domestic abuse as a victim (13% and 14% respectively), compared to 7% of males sentenced to determinate sentences over 4 years.
Females aged 30-39 were most identified as having experienced domestic abuse as a victim (76%), and those age 60+ least identified (43%). This differs from males, where those aged 40-49 are most identified as having experienced domestic abuse as a victim (12%) and age 18-25 and 60+ were least identified (6%).
In the community 67% of females were identified as victims of domestic abuse, compared to 10% of males. There is little variation in rate of domestic abuse victims identified between types of community sentence for males or females.
Females in the community aged 30-39 are most identified as having experienced domestic abuse as a victim, with 74% of offenders in this age group identified as domestic abuse victims, compared to 44% of those aged 60+. The highest prevalence identified for males in the community is in the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups, with rates of 12%.
Conclusions
These findings are unlikely to be surprising to most readers. However, the statistical bulletin does provide a useful benchmark for organisations to compare the needs of the people they are working with the overall cohorts in custody and the community.
