Prisoners' Release: Employment
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prisoners were in full-time employment within six months of their release in each year since 2021.
Answered by Jake Richards
We know that finding employment after release reduces the chance of re-offending significantly, by up to nine percentage points. Key employment roles are in place across every resettlement prison to prepare prisoners for work on release, match them to jobs and provide essential identity documents to help secure work and somewhere to live.
This information requested is a subset of data published in Offender Employment Outcome Statistics - GOV.UK. The tables below provide figures for the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2025, which is the most recent period for which verified figures are currently available.
Pre-Probation Reset1
Period | Cases in scope2 | Number of individuals in full-time employment six months post release from custody | Proportion of individuals in full-time employment six months post release from custody (%) |
2022-23 | 36,910 | 5,605 | 15.2 |
2023-24 | 35,430 | 6,825 | 19.3 |
April 2024 | 3,145 | 605 | 19.2 |
Post-Probation Reset1
| Cases in scope2 | Number of individuals in full-time employment six months post release from custody | Proportion of individuals in full-time employment six months post release from custody (%) |
May 2024 – March 2025 | 28,260 | 5,100 | 20.3 |
Notes:
1. Since the introduction of Probation Reset on 29 April 2024, some offenders may have their supervision suspended before the six months post release point is reached. This has changed the profile of the offenders captured in the cohort and reduced the size of the caseload supervised by the Probation Service six months after release. Figures for the periods pre- and post-Probation Reset are therefore not comparable, and have been presented in separate tables to account for this policy change.
2. Data are sourced from the nDelius case management system. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the information collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system due to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Owing to insufficient detail in the data for 2021-22, it is not possible to provide a breakdown by full-time employment for that period. Figures covering all types of employment, however, (not exclusively full-time roles) are published in Offender Employment Outcome Statistics, available at the link above.
From May 2024 to March 2025, 37.8% of offenders serving sentences of 12 months or more were in employment at 6 months post release from custody.
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