Everyone's talking about the prisoner who escaped from London hospitals twice in a week. But here's what they're not telling you: the number of criminals being caught committing fresh crimes after their original sentence has more than doubled since 2023.

The Ministry of Justice data shows 1,031 offenders were proven to have reoffended in the latest cohort tracked, compared to just 483 in 2023. That's a 113.5% surge in three years. (Source: Ministry of Justice, Proven Reoffending -- proven-reoffending_jan24_mar24_annual -- A4a_(annual_average))

This isn't about one dramatic escape that grabs headlines. This is about more than a thousand people who went through Britain's criminal justice system, served their time or completed their sentence, then promptly went out and committed more crimes serious enough to end up back in court with a proven conviction.

The timing matters. These figures cover the period when prisons were releasing inmates early due to overcrowding, when probation services were struggling with massive caseloads, and when rehabilitation programmes were being cut back. The result? A conveyor belt of crime that's spinning faster than ever.

Each of these 1,031 cases represents not just a failure of the system, but fresh victims. Fresh break-ins, fresh assaults, fresh thefts. While politicians argue about being tough on crime, the people meant to be reformed by punishment are committing more offences than they were three years ago.

The data exposes the fundamental lie at the heart of British criminal justice: that prison works as deterrent. If it did, you wouldn't see reoffending numbers climbing this steeply. Instead, you're watching a system that's better at creating repeat customers than preventing crime.

What makes this surge even more troubling is that it's happening despite falling overall crime rates in many categories. While fewer people are committing first-time offences, the people already in the system are cycling through it faster and more frequently.

This isn't about being soft or hard on crime. It's about a system that's measurably failing at its basic job: stopping criminals from committing more crimes. The hospital escapee made the news because it was dramatic. But the real crisis is happening quietly, one reoffence at a time, in communities across Britain.

Every single one of those 1,031 proven reoffenders had a chance to go straight. The system had a chance to turn them around. Both failed. And while everyone watches the news about dramatic escapes, the everyday failures are piling up twice as fast as they were just three years ago.