HOW to stop prisoners re-offending once released from jail is a question testing experts in Teesside today.

Martin Narey, Director General of the Prison Service, is to urge closer working between agencies dealing with released prisoners.

He will deliver a speech at a conference in his home town of Middlesbrough, about statutory agencies, those working in the prison service and voluntary organisations.

The seminar at the Riverside Stadium will outline the need for, and benefits of, closer working between agencies in an attempt to reverse depressing figures which show 36 per cent of offenders discharged from the nation's prisons are back behind bars within two years - at a cost of £65,000 for each offender returned. The North-East has eight prisons which release 4,500 inmates back into the community each year.

The conference - the first of its kind in the North-East - comes on the back of a national report on the problem of re-offending, published this summer.

Mr Narey said: "The Prison Service has moved on from simply keeping prisoners locked up to provide the means for prisoners to turn away from crime.

"Offender behaviour programmes, drug treatment, education and getting prisoners jobs on release will cut crime, but while the service can make a difference for serious, persistent and violent offenders who are with us long enough, we can do very little for short-term prisoners.

"The courts must use community penalties, which are much more effective than short periods in custody," he said.

"I am from Middlesbrough and I know that re-offending is the scourge of communities in the North-East. Between us the prison and probation services can make a real difference to the lives of prisoners released into the community."