1 INTRODUCTION
1. The purpose of this report is to evaluate the
current direction of policy and spending on the criminal justice
system, in particular to examine whether the enormous sums being
spent, particularly the large share allocated to imprisonment,
could be used more coherently and effectively.
2. In previous work we have found widespread expert,
professional and academic concern over the Government's plans
for the allocation of significant resources to prison-building.
The evidence we have seen in these inquiries suggests overwhelmingly
that the purposes of sentencing, as set out in the Criminal Justice
Act 2003, are not being achieved by the existing sentencing regime
and related policies. The prison population is projected to grow
to 96,000 by 2014 as the courts sentence offenders to custody
for longer in the absence of effective and adequately resourced
alternatives to custody and a sufficiently powerful and coherent
strategy for reducing re-offending. We note that, despite the
backdrop of a long term fall in the overall crime rate there has
been an equally persistent increase in the prison population.
Household crime, such as car theft and burglaries, and violent
crime, as experienced by victims, has fallen by 46 per cent.,
and 43 per cent., respectively since 1995[1]
while the prison population has almost doubled since 1992.[2]
In an extremely tight public expenditure environment, with the
Ministry of Justice expected to find £1.3 billion worth of
cost savings over the next three years, it is doubtful whether
further expansion in the criminal justice system, and prison estate
in particular, is wise or financially sustainable. Existing resources
cannot be stretched much further without compromising public safety
especially when the high prison numbers militate against remedial
work within prisons and the actions of relevant agencies do not
seem to focus clearly on the extent to which current efforts to
reform offenders are proving effective.
3. In previous inquires we received compelling evidence
that local community provision is insufficient. In recent evidence
the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice,
Rt Hon Jack Straw MP[3],
has spelt out some of the steps the Government is taking to promote
confidence in community sentencing, but the context for our report
is that the courts appear to doubt the effectiveness and the availability
of some criminal justice interventions to tackle offending and
re-offending at a local level and the extent to which the needs
of offenders are being met by local agencies outside the criminal
justice system, such as employment services, housing, health—particularly
mental health—and drug treatment services. The prison and
probation services seem equally unable to adequately address the
rehabilitation and resettlement needs of a large proportion of
prisoners and former prisoners leading to arguably avoidable returns
to crime and to custody.
4. The basis for an inquiry into the re-alignment
of criminal justice policies, systems and resources, aimed principally
at the reform and rehabilitation of offenders and the subsequent
reduction of crime and re-offending, developed from these concerns.
5. As this inquiry began, a much lower than expected
public expenditure allocation to the Ministry of Justice was announced
for 2008-11. This appeared to mark the end of a period of significant
growth in the prison and probation machinery. Despite this squeeze
on Ministry of Justice resources, the public finance for further
prison-building has been more or less guaranteed by the Treasury,
outside spending review constraints, amounting to £4.24 billion
over 35 years aimed at providing capacity for the projected increase
in the prison population by 2014. Despite the overwhelming evidence
that prison is not always the most effective means of reducing
re-offending for many offenders (and therefore fails the test
of increasing public safety, other than by simply incapacitating
offenders), the Government appears wedded to a prison-building
agenda, a policy which is not underpinned by supportive evidence
and therefore merits the closest possible scrutiny. There is no
doubt that the prison estate is currently bulging at the seams—with
the Prison Reform Trust recently estimating that some prisons
are up to 179 per cent. over-crowded and, as at 31 July 2009,
88 prisons out of 140 were operating over normal capacity with
nine of these at levels judged to be unsafe.[4]
There is an obvious and urgent question over whether directing
vast sums towards increasing the number of prison places is a
sensible or effective policy response.
6. The case for the closest possible scrutiny, and
for looking at penal policy in the context of the approach to
criminal justice, indeed social welfare, as a whole, is further
reinforced by comparisons with other EU and OECD countries. In
2007, the UK Government spent approximately 2.5% of GDP on public
order and safety, the highest of all OECD countries.[5]
Such comparisons raise questions about attitudes in England and
Wales to, and patterns of expenditure on, prisons relative to
other criminal justice expenditure, spending on preventative measures
and community sentences, and to other social policies such as
health, education and housing. England and Wales also looks out
of step and punitive when it comes to considering the balance
between punishment and reform in developing policy and setting
priorities.
7. The question of how resources should be distributed
across the criminal justice system formed a key part of our inquiry
and, in the light of the recent economic downturn, many submissions
referred to the timeliness of the inquiry and the need for a debate
on public spending and penal policy. The recent report of the
Commission on English Prisons Today goes so far as to suggest
that the global economic crisis is a blessing in disguise in this
respect as it establishes the necessity to re-examine a set of
incongruent policies that the Government can no longer afford
to pursue uncritically.[6]
This report explores the capacity of the current system and whether
resources and policy priorities are directed in the best possible
way to improve public safety and reduce crime, in particular:
- the use of resources within
the criminal justice system and the capacity of prisons and probation
to reduce re-offending and their relative cost-effectiveness;
- the use of resources outside the criminal
justice system and the potential re-direction of funding from
that system into health, educational and other social provision
to focus on the underlying factors which make offending and re-offending
more likely;
- what can be learnt from policies and patterns
of relevant expenditure pursued in other countries; especially
those countries where rates of imprisonment are much lower, or
have been recently reduced, without increasing crime rates; and
- the potential for achieving a more mature cross-party
consensus on law and order policy—and more effective options
for the future—than the current interaction of politics,
media and public opinion appears to allow; it is necessary to
get away from a self-defeating over-politicisation of criminal
justice policy and develop an environment conducive to identifying,
prioritising and implementing "what works" based on
the best available evidence.
8. The question of whether imprisonment represents
the most rational allocation of resources for criminal justice
is not unique to the English and Welsh context. Many other jurisdictions
including Scotland, Finland, Canada, Germany and some US states[7]
have grappled with this question, driven by recognition that resources
for criminal justice are not infinite. Although these other administrations
and legislatures have come to a variety of conclusions on the
way forward, they have shared the view that the use of imprisonment
must be reduced. We have visited these countries over the course
of our inquiry, giving us valuable alternative perspectives on
whether the challenges we face are too difficult to fix and how
we can move away from a position where over-burdened correctional
services and exponential system expansion are accepted as the
norm. We draw on examples from all these jurisdictions throughout
our report but we focus particular attention on the potential
applicability of the concept of justice reinvestment which has
enabled some US states to begin to reduce expenditure on prison
building and criminal justice.
Justice reinvestment
9. "Justice reinvestment" is a term that
refers to a variety of approaches to criminal justice policy reform
developed in the USA over the last 10 years which have sought
to tackle burgeoning prison populations by addressing the root
causes of criminality. The growth in prison numbers in the US
has placed enormous pressure on state budgets. Whatever their
political allegiance, state governments have been faced with stark
choices about whether to continue to spend public money on meeting
the projected demand for prison beds or whether to consider ways
of reducing that demand and introducing alternative measures which
produce more cost-effective contributions to public safety.
10. At its simplest 'justice reinvestment' refers
to the persuasive proposition that it is far better—and
probably much cheaper—to focus resources on preventing criminality
than solely on catching, convicting and incarcerating criminals.
The approach, in effect, looks to implement effectively the 'getting
tough on the causes of crime' half of the Labour Party's original
statement of purpose on criminal justice before the 1997 election.
Justice reinvestment seeks to reverse what many have argued to
be a grave and expensive failure of social policy which leads
to prison becoming a stand-in health and welfare system for people
with problems—often bundles of problems related to legacies
of low literacy, unmet mental health needs and/or drug and alcohol
dependencies—that society in general, and their local services
in particular, have failed to deal with. It also challenges policymakers
to think carefully about the consequences of some criminal justice
measures that are considered to be 'tough on crime', for example,
by encouraging criminal justice agencies to seek to enhance offenders'
compliance with community orders rather than to focus on the enforcement
of breaches.
11. Justice reinvestment involves the development
of an evidence-based, data-driven, strategy designed to produce
policies that "break the cycle of recidivism, avert prison
expenditures and make communities safer."[8]
The process examines current spending and seeks to identify ways
to improve effectiveness with the aim of establishing a longer-term
strategy, re-directing prison funding towards more productive
locally-based initiatives designed to tackle the underlying problems
which give rise to criminal behaviour. Such initiatives are targeted
on those populations most at risk of offending and re-offending
which is why a local focus is required. The first step of the
process is to analyse the relationship between high levels of
various indices of deprivation, such as low employment, and high
levels of re-offending in the same areas. This analysis enables
locally-based policy options to be developed using what is known
about the needs of offenders, demands for services and the most
cost-effective practices, to prioritise investment and ultimately
reduce spending on the criminal justice system as a whole.[9]
12. The analytical model which underpins the process
was pioneered by the Justice Mapping Center in New York which
we visited in 2007. The application of this approach in New York
City identified so-called 'million dollar blocks', i.e. single
residential blocks where the administration was spending over
a million dollars on incarcerating the inhabitants. Tragically,
spending on prison places was found to represent the majority
'social investment' in some of these blocks. The justice reinvestment
process is now being applied in several US states, with the main
impetus coming from the Council of State Governments Justice Center.[10]
The context in England and Wales is rather different
from the US. England and Wales has a much lower proportion of
its population in prison than the US where 760 per 100,000 of
the population are in custody, compared to 151 here. The US also
lacks a universal welfare system and the system of governance
is very different with imprisonment provided at local (county),
state and federal levels via different institutions and budgets
for different offences. Despite these differences, interest has
been emerging in the potential benefits of adopting key aspects
of the approach in the UK.[11]
A major part of our inquiry has been to examine the potential
value of the justice reinvestment approach to the criminal justice
system in England and Wales and, if it appears desirable to implement
such an approach, to consider how our systems could be organised
so that it could be applied. This is discussed in chapter 6.
Conduct of the inquiry
13. Lists of the oral evidence sessions held, the
written evidence gathered and the visits undertaken during this
inquiry are set out at the back of this report. The substance
of the evidence received can be found in a second volume. In addition
to evidence received via traditional means, we also conducted
an e-consultation between 9 June and 22 July 2008. The contributions
received online inform the report throughout but we also include
an overall analysis in an annex to this report (see annex 4).
We also took into account a significant number of reports and
analyses already in the public domain and, where relevant, these
are referenced in footnotes to the text.
14. We would like to take this opportunity to thank
all the providers of oral and written evidence, as well as the
contributors to our e-consultation, for taking the time and trouble
to do so. We are also very grateful to Rob Allen of the International
Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London for acting
as a special adviser to the Committee on all aspects of this inquiry.
1 Home Office, Crime in England and Wales 2008/09,
Vol 1: Findings from the British Crime Survey and police recorded
crime, July 2009 Back
2
Home Office, Prison statistics in England and Wales 2002, November
2003, Cm 5996 Back
3
Hereafter 'the Justice Secretary' Back
4
Prison Reform Trust, Top 20 worst overcrowded prisons,
25 Aug 2009. Back
5
Table 11 OECD. Stat database Back
6
Commission on English Prisons Today, Do better do less: Report
of the Commission on English Prisons Today, London, 2009, paras
3.10-13 Back
7
Including Arizona, Connecticut, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada, New
Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont
and Wisconsin. Back
8
Allen, R. 'Justice Reinvestment: A new approach to crime and justice?',
Prison Service Journal, Issue 176, pp 2-9 Back
9
The US Council of State Governments describes justice reinvestment
as a four-stage process: (1) Analysis of the prison population
and of relevant public spending in the communities to which people
return from prison-known as 'justice mapping'; (2) provision of
options to policy-makers for the generation of savings and increases
in public safety; (3) implementation of options, quantification
of savings and reinvestment in targeted high-risk communities;
and (4) measurement of impacts, evaluation and assurance of effective
implementation. See www.justicereinvestment.org/strategy Back
10
Ev 169 Back
11
See for example, Allen, R. and Stern, V. eds, Justice reinvestment-a
new approach to crime and justice, International Centre for Prison
Studies, June 2007; Ross, H, Justice reinvestment: what it is
and why it may be an idea to consider in Scotland, CjScotland,
July 2008 Back
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