A burglar walks out of prison in Manchester today. Within two years, there's a 23% chance they'll be back in court for another crime. That's not speculation - it's what happens to nearly one in four convicted criminals across England and Wales.

While headlines focus on high-profile cases like Prince Andrew's arrest on misconduct charges, the latest Ministry of Justice data reveals a quieter crisis: Britain's criminal justice system is systematically failing to stop reoffending.

The reoffending rate has climbed to 23.2% - meaning 232 out of every 1,000 convicted offenders will commit fresh crimes serious enough to land them back in court. That's a jump of nearly 30% since records began, when the figure stood at 18%.

This isn't about individual failures. It's about system-wide breakdown. Every year, tens of thousands of people cycle through courts, serve their sentences, then return to commit new crimes against new victims. The pattern repeats with mechanical predictability.

The numbers expose the gap between political rhetoric about being "tough on crime" and actual results. Prison sentences that don't rehabilitate. Community programmes that don't connect. Support systems that don't exist when people walk free.

Behind each percentage point are real victims. The shop owner whose store gets burgled by someone fresh out of prison. The family whose car gets stolen by a repeat offender. The pensioner who gets mugged by someone the system already had a chance to help.

What makes this particularly stark is the context. While government ministers announce new sentencing guidelines and build more prison places, they're essentially processing the same people through the same broken cycle. More prison capacity without better rehabilitation just means more people reoffending after longer sentences.

The data doesn't break down by crime type or region, but it captures something fundamental: whatever we're doing to stop criminals from committing fresh crimes, it's getting worse, not better. Every conviction that leads to reoffending represents not just policy failure, but human cost - both for new victims and for offenders who might have been helped to change course.

This 28% increase in reoffending didn't happen overnight. It's the accumulated result of years of decisions about funding, priorities, and how seriously we take the difference between punishment and prevention. The question isn't whether Andrew's case will dominate headlines. It's whether anyone in power is paying attention to the thousands of cases that don't.

(Source: Ministry of Justice, Proven Reoffending -- proven-reoffending_jan24_mar24_3_monthly -- A7a_(3_monthly))