Memorandum submitted by the National Audit
Office Home Affairs and Justice Value for Money team
The National Audit Office's Home Affairs and
Justice Value for Money team has produced several reports in recent
years which have considered the effectiveness of various aspects
of current investment in both prisons and the non-custodial rehabilitation
of offenders.
Due to the substantial volume of work that we have
conducted in this field in recent years, this submission does
not attempt to summarise all of our findings, but rather directs
the Justice Committee to NAO work which they may find useful in
determining the cost-effectiveness of prisons and potential alternative
policies to custody.
THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS
OF PRISONS
AND BARRIERS
TO THIS
EFFECTIVENESS
In 2007 the average prison place in England
and Wales cost just under £29,000 per annum.[21]
Yet, according to the Ministry of Justice's new measures for recording
re-offending, the proportion of offenders who re-offend is 41.6%.[22]
The Social Exclusion Unit's 2002 report, Reducing
re-offending by ex-prisoners, identified activities required
at different stages of a prisoner's sentence (and following their
release) which impact upon their likelihood of re-offending.[23]
This included providing support to prisoners for housing, employment,
education and training, benefits and financial support, drugs
and alcohol addiction, and mental and physical health. These key
factors in reducing re-offending then informed the National Offender
Management Service's seven pathways out of re-offending.
However, significant barriers exist to prisons
being able to effectively reduce re-offending, and these have
been identified in various NAO reports in recent years:
— In our 2002 report, HM Prison
Service: Reducing Prisoner Reoffending, we found that the
Prison Service had made good progress in introducing programmes
designed to reduce reoffending. However, the rapid expansion of
programme provision had been carried out without a clear idea
of how these programmes complemented other activities. In addition,
it was difficult for the Prison Service to assess the full cost
of providing programmes and whether the mix of programmes provided
was the best value for money. For a full copy of this report,
please go to http://merlin/reports/nao/0102/n0102548.pdf
— In 2008 the NAO commissioned a feasibility
paper for a proposed follow-up to our 2002 reoffending report
from Professor Mike Hough of the Institute for Criminal Policy
Research. Professor Hough concluded that any follow-up report
will find that little has changed since 2002. This research also
suggested that key drivers of effectiveness in reducing reoffending
include such basic factors as the quality of a prison's regime,
staff skills, the stability of a prison population, and arrangements
for resettlement. These drivers of effectiveness may be undermined
at present by the "churn" of prisoners caused by overcrowding
and the movement of prisoners between different institutions,
which can prevent consistency in their rehabilitation. Professor
Hough's work also suggests that, given that many offenders have
multiple rehabilitation requirements, little consideration has
been given to the sequence in which they are delivered.
— Our 2008 report, Meeting needs?
The Offenders' learning and Skills Service, found that a number
of issues impact adversely upon the delivery of learning and skills
training for prisoners. In particular, this report found that
levels of provision at each prison did not necessarily match need.
This study also found that education and training courses are
often not completed by prisoners because they are transferred
between different institutions. The full report can be found at:
http://merlin/reports/nao/0708/n0708310.pdf
POTENTIAL ALTERNATIVE
POLICIES TO
CUSTODY
Other recent NAO work has also explored the
current effectiveness of non-custodial forms of offender rehabilitation,
including parole, community orders, anti-social behaviour orders,
and initiatives in the community targeting gang activity:
— Our 2008 report, Protecting the
public: the work of the Parole Board, found that the Parole
Board is constrained from performing as effectively as it could
by delays within the Ministry of Justice, Prison Service, and
Probation service in providing timely information for the parole
system. This report can be found in full at: http://merlin/reports/nao/0708/n0708239.pdf
— Prior to our 2008 report on the effectiveness
of community orders, the NAO commissioned research from RAND Europe
synthesising literature on the effectiveness of community orders.
This found that there is strong evidence that community-based
cognitive/behavioural programmes and some types of drug treatment
work in reducing recidivism, and can be read in full at http://merlin/reports/nao/0708/n0708203_II.pdf
— A literature review conducted for
our 2006 study on anti-social behaviour focussed on the costs
and effectiveness of interventions to reduce anti-social behaviour
and crime. This review identified a number of principles for "what
works" in interventions to reduce recidivism. Key principles
include setting interventions in a community setting as much as
possible and responding to the learning needs of the offender.
This report can be found in full at: http://merlin/reports/nao/0607/n060799_rand_europe.pdf
— Our 2008 study, The Home Office:
reducing the risk of violent crime, highlighted a range of
non-custodial community-based interventions designed to combat
types of violent crime including gang-related activity. These
include the Birmingham Reducing Gang Violence Project, in which
key agencies work in partnership mediating between gangs using
techniques developed in Northern Ireland. This report can be found
in full at: http://merlin/reports/nao/0708/n0708241.pdf
June 2008
21 HM Prison Service Annual Report 2006-07 Part
3 Appendices, available at http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/resourcecentre/publicationsdocuments/index.asp?cat=38 Back
22
Re-offending of adults: new measures of re-offending 2000-05
England and Wales. Back
23
Social Exclusion Unit, Reducing re-offending by ex-prisoners,
available at http://www.lifechangeuk.com/PDF%5CSEU%20-%20Reducing%20re-offending%20by%20ex-prisoners.pdf Back
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