§ Mr. WhittingdaleTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) if he will list those offences for which offenders have been sentenced to the Young Offenders Institution in Colchester indicating the number of offenders in each category; [24573]
(2) what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Young Offenders Institution in Colchester; and if he will make a statement; [24572]
(3) how many offenders have completed their service at the Colchester Young Offenders Institution; and how many of those have since been charged with a further offence. [24574]
§ Ms Quin(i) The information requested is shown in the table:
Offences committed by young offenders at Her Majesty's Young Offender Institution (HMYOI) Colchester Principal Offence Number of young offenders Burglary 21 Robbery 16 Actual bodily harm 6 Grievous bodily harm 5 Wounding 4 Theft 4 Arson 3 Affray 3 Car crime 3 Possession of drugs with intent to supply 1 (ii) At 20 January 1998, 36 young offenders had completed their sentence at Colchester YOI, and of those one is known to have been reconvicted.
47W(iii) I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Castlepoint (Ms Butler) on 22 January 1998, Official Report, columns 639–40.
The Institute of Criminology at Cambridge has been carrying out an assessment of the experimental regime at Colchester YOI. Preliminary results show that the regime can have a positive effect upon the attitudes of young offenders but do not prove that it deters young offenders from reoffending. However, the test of the effectiveness of the regime will not be known until the recidivism rate on all those who have been released from Colchester is known and cannot be fully known until a considerable period of time has elapsed.