Cork-Kerry region has highest number of people reoffending after being freed from prison

The vast majority of probation-breaches — just under two thirds, or 65% — occurred under just three categories of crime: drugs, public order offences, and theft.

The highest number of people reoffending after being freed from prison on probation is in the Cork-Kerry region, where 31% of individuals committed crimes after their release.

The CSO has also revealed almost one probationer in two will commit, and be convicted of, an offence within three years of their release.

Just over a quarter of offenders who were placed on probation in 2020 had reoffended within a year, a rise of 2% on the same figure for 2019, the CSO said in its latest release on recidivism.

2020 is the most recent year for which statistics as at least three years’ worth of data is required to establish reoffending rates — one year to total the number of re-offences committed, and a further two years to establish adjusted re-conviction rates.

The biggest cohort of probationers by type of crime was those convicted of drug offences — 605 out of 3,478 people — with just over a fifth of those being convicted of a further offence within a year of their release.

The vast majority of probation-breaches — just under two thirds, or 65% — occurred under just three categories of crime: drugs, public order offences, and theft.

The highest levels of such reoffending were seen among adult males aged under 25, who had a 37% rate of reoffending, with the same figure for young females at 25%.

Conversely, however, males over 45 years had a reoffending-within-one-year rate of just 15%, whereas females in that age bracket had a 21% recidivist rate.

County breakdown

While the highest geographic rate of reoffending was seen in Cork and Kerry, the levels of people breaching their probation in Dublin — where the vast majority, about a third, of such offenders live — was 27%.

Reoffending rates vary greatly by region — with just 21% of offenders in the west and midlands reoffending within one year of release, versus the 31% seen in Cork and Kerry.

By county, Donegal and Wicklow — 10% and 12% respectively — had the lowest rates of reoffending, with Monaghan posting the worst figure of 35%.

The CSO said that over a longer timeframe of three years, nearly half of the people placed on probation — 45% — had committed at least once offence for which they received a conviction.

However, those figures are actually a marked improvement — albeit from a smaller sample size — on the three-year rates seen in 2017 — 47% - and particularly on the stats recorded a decade previously in 2008, when the same rate was 55%.

The 2020 figures for probationers are slightly skewed as there were significantly less — 35% — probation orders issued that year due to the onset of covid-19.