Bosses highlight cost of reoffending

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High rates of reoffending were singled out by the CBI as the main cause for concern.

It urged the Government to improve schemes designed to help inmates get jobs on release, insisting that this was the key to cutting the cost of crime, which currently runs at £60 billion a year.

Reducing the reoffending rate by 10% would save £1 billion a year - enough to pay for nearly 50,000 extra nurses or build more than 40 new academy schools, the CBI suggested.

Deputy director general John Cridland said: "Surely the Government owes it to the public and to taxpayers to make prison a place that helps offenders turn around their lives and repay their debt to society?

"If the Government now believes that prison is mainly about containing offenders, it should be upfront about that.

"But re-offending rates are already unacceptably high. Punishment needs to go hand-in-hand with rehabilitation if the criminal justice system is really to work in the interests of all of us.

"Otherwise taxpayers will keep on paying for an endless merry-go-round of crime-court-custody."

Figures out last week showed the rate of violent and sexual reoffending had risen by 12.5% since 2000, but adult reoffending overall fell by 11.4% over the same period, thanks to reductions in low-level crimes.