This is the first year that reconviction data affected by the pandemic has been published and is therefore not considered to be indicative of longer-term trends.

The reconviction rate, which is the percentage of offenders who are reconvicted in a year, was 24.1 per cent in 2019-20, which is a 4.5 percentage point decrease from 28.6 per cent in 2018-19. The average number of reconvictions, a measure of how often offenders are reconvicted, also decreased over the same period from 0.51 to 0.40.

Prior to this pandemic-affected publication, there has been a long-term trend of reconviction rates gradually decreasing. Between 2009-10 and 2018-19, the reconviction rate has fallen by 2.0 per cent, from 30.6 per cent to 28.6 per cent.

As in previous years, males are reconvicted more often, on average, than females. In 2019-20, the average number of reconvictions per offender for males was 0.41, which was higher than the value of 0.36 for females. Both measures of reconvictions for males and females were lower than last year.

As in previous years, offenders who committed a crime of dishonesty had the highest reconviction rate (40.2 per cent in 2019-20), compared to offenders that committed another type of crime. Offenders who committed a sexual crime had the lowest (10.8 per cent in 2019-20). The type of crime committed is one of a range of factors associated with the likelihood of being reconvicted, including the sentence received, offending history, and characteristics of individual offenders.

Although lower than other crimes, offenders who committed a sexual crime saw an increase in the reconviction rate from the previous year by 0.2 percentage points (Table 6), the only increase for court disposals in this publication. One potential reason for this increase is that the cohort size for this crime is relatively small, meaning a small change would have a greater effect on percentages compared to larger cohorts. The latest change also follows a decrease of 1 percentage point the previous year.

In 2019-20, 5.5 per cent of offenders with an index domestic abuse crime or offence were reconvicted for a further domestic abuse crime or offence, and 15.0 per cent were reconvicted for any type of crime or offence.

Offenders released from a custodial sentence had an average number of reconvictions per offender of 0.70 in 2019-20, which was 16 per cent lower than 0.83 in 2018-19.

Community payback orders (CPOs) are the most commonly used community sentence. The reconviction rate was 25.1 per cent in 2019-20, a decrease from the stable rates of previous years. The cohort size for CPOs had its first increase from the previous year since 2014-15, although still the second smallest since 2012-13.

Fifteen per cent of individuals given a non-court disposal by the police in 2019-20 (such as a warning or fine) received another non-court disposal within a year.