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Offender Management

I am grateful for and perhaps surprised by the direction of those comments. The central objective, which is shared throughout the whole service, is to reduce reoffending. That is the test for the precise reason that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) identified: by reducing reoffending, we make the greatest savings for society in terms of the overall economic position. The test applies to the public sector, whether the probation service or the Prison Service, voluntary and community organisations that want to work in the field and private sector organisations. That is the appropriate test: not cost cutting and its attendant aspects, but reducing reoffending. To tease out the details of my hon. Friend’s important question, we shall shortly publish a prospectus that will go through our approach to different sorts of offender, different parts of the country and so on. By doing that, we will explore how different organisations want to meet the challenge of reoffending among particular groups.