Ministry of Justice Re-offends

You heard it here first, this is an election issue in the making - it may even lead to us saving a few billion a year if we can flush out the truth.

Justice Minister for Prisons, Maria Eagle, had the pleasure of our company last month whilst we tried to get to the bottom of some criminal stats. Seems that Alan Duncan's also bumped into her on the same nausea inducing issue.

The Sun, admittedly, purveyors of strange and wonderful parallel universe, were the only newspaper to pick up on it. Duncan's accused the government of a "shameful attempt" to mislead the public over the scale of re-offending. David Howarth, the Lib-Dem justice spokesman and friend of the Ministry said, "there can be no excuse for the release of confusing or misleading figures".

The figure in dispute is the rate of re-offending. An absolutely key figure because it tells us how effective we are at dealing with the offenders we pick up. In the 1970's this reached a then unheard of 30% - inducing all kinds of reform. Today the rate, depending on the kind of offender/offence varies between 75% and 90%.

Probation officers' leader Harry Fletcher said: "The Government has changed the way it collates statistics on violent offenders. This could give the impression there's been a reduction in numbers and therefore less threat to the public. In reality, however, the number has almost certainly increased. The effect has been total confusion and uncertainty about what the actual trends are."

Apologies for the fisking but it's not often you get to quote The Sun, "The Ministry of Justice said it was impossible to compare figures because of the different way they were collated. Justice Minister Maria Eagle said the number of criminals who "re-offend seriously" has remained at about 0.5 per cent for four years.".