Last week, the National Audit Office revealed that the probation service was officially thought to need an extra 3,150 staff to be able to deliver a basic standard of sentence management. It now looks like even that startling figure will be an under-estimate. Yesterday (30 October 2025), the MoJ published a wide rage of statistical bulletins, many of which show both the growing pressures on the service and the impact on the people on probation and the wider public.
I apologise for inflicting this new load of misery on readers but it seems important not to ignore the realities of the situation.
Caseload
The Offender Management Statistics quarterly (OMSq) bulletin (for the three months ending on 30 June 2025) show increasing demand on probation staff. The overall number of people under probation supervision on 30 June was 244,209 – a 2% increase on the same date last year. In this last 12 month period, the court order caseload increased by 2% from 106,422 to 108,681, with the number of offenders on a community order (CO) decreasing by 2% and those on a suspended sentence order with requirements (SSO) increasing by 8%.
Early releases have obviously had an impact. Almost 15,000 people (14,946) were released from a prison sentence in this latest quarter – a 12% increase on last year.
Indeed, the MoJ also published “Transparency Data” on the number of people released under the Standard Determinate Sentences 40% (SDS40) early release scheme yesterday which revealed that almost 40,000 (38,042) people were released from prison early in the 9 month period between 10 September 2024 and 30 June 2025 – all of whom, of course, were required to be subject to probation supervision. The accompanying data tables still exclude the one key piece of data that everyone wants to know – how many of people released early with minimal support are recalled.
However, we do know (from the OMSq) that 11,041 people were recalled on licence in this last quarter – an increase of 13% on the same quarter last year. There usually is more than one reason for recalling an offender on licence. Of recalls in April-June 2025, about 74% involved non-compliance, 36% involved failure to keep in touch, 23% involved failure to reside, and less than one quarter (22%) involved a charge of further offending.
Impact
We know from a range of sources how these continuing rising demands impact on both the quality of supervision and support that probation staff are able to provide and on their own physical and psychological wellbeing. We can also see the impact on reoffending rates.
Yesterday, the MoJ published its proven reoffending (i.e. reconviction) statistics for the October to December 2023 offender cohort.
An offender is included in this publication cohort if they were released from custody, received a non-custodial conviction at court, or received a reprimand, warning, or caution in the three-month period spanning October to December 2023.
A proven reoffence is defined as any offence committed in a one-year follow-up period that leads to a court conviction, caution, reprimand, or warning in the one-year follow-up or within a further six-month waiting period to allow the offence to be proven in court. For this reason, this is the most up-to-date reoffending data. It shows that:
- The overall proven reoffending rate was 28.3% for the October to December 2023 offender cohort. This represents an increase of 2.0 percentage points from the same quarter in 2022 and an increase of 0.4 percentage points over last quarter.
- Adult offenders had a proven reoffending rate of 28.2%. This is an increase of 2.0 percentage points since the same quarter in 2022 and an increase of 0.4 percentage points over last quarter.
- Child offenders had a proven reoffending rate of 32.3%. The child reoffending rate increased by 0.9 percentage points from the same quarter in 2022 and increased by 0.5 percentage points over last quarter.
- Adults released from custody or starting court orders had a proven reoffending rate of 36.1%. This is an increase of 2.2 percentage points since the same quarter in 2022 and broadly the same as the last quarter.
- Adults released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months had a proven reoffending rate of 61.2%. This is an increase of 4.6 percentage points since the same quarter in 2022. Adults released from sentences of less than or equal to 6 months had a proven reoffending rate of 64.7%, which is an increase of 5.1 percentage points since the same quarter in 2022.
Conclusion
This grim summary shows the extent of the challenge for Government. We must wait and see whether the Sentencing Bill which had its Third Reading in the House of Commons on 29 October (whose primary purpose is to introduce the recommendations of the Independent Sentencing Review) will make a real impact on reducing the demands on our prison and probation services.
Thanks to Bernard Hermant for kind permission to use the header image in this post which was previously published on Unsplash.
