More work needed to tackle reoffending in Scotland EFFORTS to tackle reoffending are disjointed, despite a £128 million annual budget, Audit Scotland has warned. It said this has led to relatively static reconviction rates with 30 per cent of offenders reconvicted within a year. It also found that 9,500 people convicted last year - one in five of the total - had at least ten previous convictions. Auditor General for Scotland Caroline Gardner said: "Almost £130m is spent a year on reducing reoffending and it is important this money is spent effectively. However, access and availability vary, and there is a mismatch between what is delivered and what is known to work to reduce reoffending. In particular, there needs to be more support for people serving short-term sentences. The proportion of criminals reoffending within two years fell from 44.1 per cent for 2006-7 offenders, to 42.4 per cent for the 2007-8 cohort, the lowest level since 1997-98, a report released in August found. Social workers believe the key to a reduction is improved work in communities. Peter MacLeod, president of the Association of Directors of Social Work, said: "It is within these community-based services and not in custody that successful work to stop reoffending can be done. Detailed work needs to be done to shift money out of prison-dominated budgets towards more investment in community based services. A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Reconviction rates in Scotland are now at their lowest level in the past 13 years and recorded crime now stands at a 37-year low. However, we agree that reoffending rates have been unacceptably high. That is why we are taking action to address low-level offenders, because the evidence shows offenders who serve a short prison sentence are reconvicted three times as often as those who receive community service orders.