Those who serve one to two years in turn reoffend more often than those sentenced to between two and four years. In general, as time served increases the likelihood of reoffending falls. No doubt Justice Secretary Ken Clarke will use the figures to argue for replacing prison terms of under a year with “community punishments” (so-called because it is usually the community that gets punished).
In fact the statistics prove that prison works but only if offenders are locked away for long enough. Rather than leaning on judges to keep criminals out of jail, a more effective piece of sentencing advice for them would be to think of a number and then double it.