One in Ten Convicted Criminals Re-offend

An estimated one in ten people on probation in Torbay committed another crime last year.

New figures from the Ministry of Justice show the reoffending rate in 2009 was 10.25% for the county - Higher than the predicted 9.95%.

Spokesperson for our probation service Jacquie Felix-Mitchell says financial worries do have an impact: "if someone doesn't have stable accomodation then its not going to help them lead a more secure life, they are less likely to get a secure job, they have less money and then it might lead them to a life of crime."

She has told Heart there is only so much the probation service can do: "people are unpredictable, you can look at the crime they have committed, you can look at ways of making sure it doesn't happen again. At the end of the day it is down to them but it is an area of concern that we are looking at to see why is that rate is different to what is predicted. What we are doing is using the statistics to see what is likely to cause individuals to reoffend and we're working more and more closely with that."

She continued: "at the end of the day it is less than one percent between what the predicted rate was and the actual rate was but even one percent we want to reduce that"