Written evidence from Rebecca Clarke (Greater
Manchester Probation Trust) (PB 73)
As part of the Justice Reform Agenda, set out in
the Justice Green Paper published in November 2010, the Ministry
of Justice (MoJ) is seeking to test a justice reinvestment/payment
by results model. This aims to deliver savings to government
and to local partnerships, through efficiency and effectiveness
savings against a suite of interventions and outcomes.
The key objectives of the Transforming Justice (TJ)
Project are to:
1. reduce crime, reoffending and the wider impact
of crime and dependency on society;
2. work better across criminal justice and partner
public, private and voluntary agencies to reduce duplication and
deliver sequenced, integrated interventions and stream line services;
and
3. reduce costs to the criminal justice system.
Across these three objectives the Transforming Justice
initiative offers opportunities for the Probation Trust to engage
with both CJS and non-CJS agencies on these important issues.
Establishing a forum where these agencies prioritise their role
working to identify and address social and individual factors
which are linked to offending and reoffending. More specifically
it has the potential to increase awareness and service provision
for non-statutory offenders serving less than 12 months in prison.
As part of the Transforming Justice pilots in both
London and Manchester the MoJ has developed a local financial
incentives (LFI) approach. In relation to the adult Financial
Incentive Model (FIM) the MOJ will pay back half of their calculated
cashable savings if a 5% reduction in adult demand is achieved
(with an upper limit threshold 20% reduction in demand). For the
Youth FIM the threshold is 10%, Youth Justice Trust colleagues
indicate that there are significant challenges with this due to
the level of reduction we have already seen in recent years on
the number of first time entrants.
The issue of improving against the baseline years
is also an issue within the adult context and the potential for
Probation Trusts to trigger a reward in relation to metrics such
as the reduction in custody. In recent years there has been a
relatively significant investment to address this aim of reducing
the prison population. The impact of this activity will be registered
within the baseline period, yet this funding does not continue
within the TJ pilot period. A clear example of this is in Greater
Manchester is the £2 million invested in the Intensive Alternative
to Custody pilot which has demonstrably reduced the number going
to short term custody. The MOJ funding ended on 31 March 2011
and it is a significant challenge to retain this pilot within
mainstream budgets, and almost impossible to extend this beyond
the existing cohort and geography in the current financial context
(and therefore impact on the FIM).
MoJ's central requirement is a substantial reduction
in criminal justice outcomes (i.e. suspended sentence orders,
community orders, order requirements, short custodial sentences
and all other convictions and associated disposals) when compared
to a baseline of 2010-11. The baseline and payment by results
are calculated through a list of five metrics which quantify costs
associated with these different outcomes.
MoJ does not prescribe how the reduction is achieved
or which parts of the criminal justice system are reduced in volume.
They do require however that any payments by results from the
FIM are used where possible for services aimed at reducing reoffending.
The GM pilot would also seek to use a proportion of the FIM payment
to support further integration and reform. If the thresholds
are achieved, payment will be made to Greater Manchester partners
by 30 November 2012 for year 1 and 30 November 2013 for year 2.
Analysis has been undertaken by a TJ Data & Design
Group in GM exploring a number of possible "scenarios"
for meeting the necessary reductions in demand in order to release
the reward from the FIM. The scale and impact of each intervention
was modelled, and the resulting change in costs using the Financial
Incentive Model metrics was calculated based on diversions from
one disposal route to another or out of the criminal justice system.
The process of analysis by this group has not included
reductions in demand which would be due to the potential impact
of the various options on reoffending rates. This is both because
the robust evidence of impact on reoffending for these options
is limited, and because recent trends indicate that CJS demand
is not necessarily correlated with reoffending. Furthermore, any
reduction is unlikely to impact the first year of the programme.
In discussion with colleagues from MOJ it is viewed that the evaluation
process (to be defined and commissioned by MOJ) will be the key
route through which an understanding regarding the link between
the FIM activity and reoffending will be established.
The key conclusions from the "scenario modelling"
work to date are as follows
— Interventions
that are intended to reduce dependency, eg the Intensive Alternative
to Custody (IAC), which are believed to be useful long term approaches
to managing offenders do not result in large savings in the FIM
because:
— They
are focussed on a relatively small cohort.
— They
often involve community orders with a high volume of requirements;
therefore increases on these two metrics (orders and requirements)
offset the savings from the reduction in custody.
— The
analysis does not take into account underlying trends in crime
or economic conditions. It is possible that the volumes of convictions
could reduce or increase due to changes outside the proposed interventions.
For example, changes in the number of front line police officers
could impact on the numbers of arrests leading to a resultant
change in the number of court convictions.
— Due
to the make-up of the metrics in the FIM, almost half of the costs
are associated with the "Other Convictions" metric.
In order to hit the 5% cost reduction threshold interventions
will need to be focused on diverting high volumes of individuals
away from the courts through the increased use of interventions
such as Restorative Justice, conditional cautioning and PND or
for example, reviewing how TV license disposals are dealt with.
Scenario modeling has predicted that a minimum reduction of approx
4,300 court convictions would be required. This would result in
a payment from the MoJ of £850,000 (based on 2009-10 figures).
It should be noted that there would need to be significant policy
changes to achieve the above reduction.
Such an approach will only achieve objective 3—to
reduce costs to the criminal justice system. In order to achieve
the other Transforming Justice objectives we need to consider
the Community Budget approach that will engage a wider partnership
of services delivering sequenced and integrated interventions.
A number of the interventions modelled have benefits
outside of the criminal justice system that are not captured in
the FIM. This is especially true for those interventions designed
to reduce dependency. For example, early evaluation results from
the IAC programme show promising results in getting offenders
into employment. Work has started to assess some of these interventions
and to understand the potential savings to a wide range of agencies.
This could lead to investment agreements between agencies based
on a wider set of outcomes than are included in the FIM. Another
key area for exploration here would be interventions for women
offenders, but once again despite the fact that such initiatives
could achieve significant cost savings across a wide group of
agencies, the low numbers would not release any monies through
the FIM.
As a result of these complexities the monitoring
of the pilot will need to be multi-faceted. Enabling measurement
in relation to the outcomes as measured by the FIM metrics (specifically
around demand on the CJS) as well as the potential for interventions
or approaches developed under the Transforming Justice banner
to impact upon re-offending and the dependency of offenders which
impacts on the budgets of a wider group of agencies. This means
the TJ pilot is a particularly challenging enterprise not just
for delivery but in terms of monitoring and evaluating to support
understanding of the impact across the objectives outlined at
the start of this paper. An evaluation is currently being scoped
by the MOJ and the design will need to reflect the range of priorities
within the pilot in such a way that those participating in the
TJ Pilot within London and Manchester (and those keenly watching
from the sidelines in other localities) can be confident that
future decisions regarding such payment by results approaches
are based on the learning from this pilot.
The Probation Trust has committed to participating
in the pilot, with a view to using this as an opportunity to raise
the profile of the work we do and promote an integrated approach
to reducing reoffending in our locality. We will carefully consider
the value of aligning some of our resource with other agencies
where there is evidence that this will increase both efficiency
and effectiveness in relation to outcomes for offenders and victims.
We are keen to see if obstacles can be overcome and the opportunities
can be realised and this can assist the agencies involved in reducing
reoffending deliver their services in a way which demonstrates
value for money.
March 2011
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