Press Statement

Preasráiteas

17 November 2020

Go to release: Probation Re-offending Statistics 2016

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (17 November 2020) published the results of its most recent estimates of probation re-offending.

Commenting on the release, Felix Coleman, Statistician, said: ‘Probation re-offending estimates are calculated using data provided by the Irish Probation Service and An Garda Síochána's PULSE reporting system. In order to qualify as a re-offender, probationers must be linked to a substantial PULSE incident within the three-year qualifying period (allowing one year for the committal of an offence and a further two years for court conviction to be secured).

There has been a small increase in the one-year probation re-offending rate between 2013 and 2016 from 28% to 31.1%. The data from 2016 indicates that younger age groups of probationers continue to be much more likely to re-offend with almost 45.6% of probationers aged less than 18 at the time of receiving a probation sanction re-offending. In contrast, indicators show that just 21.7% of probationers who were over 65 re-offended.

There is negligible difference in the overall re-offending rates between males and females. Although the majority of individuals who received probation orders in 2016 were male (85%), slightly more males re-offended (30.3%) than females (30%).

In addition to having the highest proportion of re-offending (39.1%), theft related offences also contained the highest number of individuals who received probation orders in 2016. A total of 946 out of 4,447 (21.2%) individuals who received probation orders in 2016 did so as a result of theft related offences. Individuals who received probation orders for public order offences (507) accounted for 11.4% of individuals who received probation orders in 2016.’

The CSO thanks both the Irish Probation Service and An Garda Síochána for their help in compiling statistics on Probation Re-offending.

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