3 Developments in crime reduction
since 2010
The Government's strategic priorities
for the reduction of crime
25. We consider here the key developments
in the Government's approach to crime reduction since our predecessor
Committee published its report shortly before the 2010 General
Election. The Government asserts that it is taking a "comprehensive
approach" to crime reduction. It is: i) addressing the drivers
of crime, particularly alcohol, drugs, anti-social behaviour,
violence and organised crime; ii) supporting effective policing
at local and national level through the introduction of "a
radical programme of reforms"; and iii) breaking the cycle
of reoffending by "transforming how offenders are rehabilitated".[59]
26. A central part of this Government's
approach is tackling what it calls the "key drivers"
of crime, with primary responsibility for doing so resting with
the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. The former's energies
are focused on the reduction of crime by those already involved
in the criminal justice system, predominantly through its Transforming
Rehabilitation reforms, whilst the latter has replaced a range
of policing targets with a single objective of reducing crime,
and has introduced a range of reforms in an effort to accomplish
this, including the creation of the National Crime Agency and
local Police and Crime Commissioners.
27. Much of the activity required to
decrease criminality lies outside the criminal justice system,
and as such responsibilities cut across a number of Government
departments. Those who commit crime often face mental health or
substance misuse problems—the funding for which primarily
resides with the Department of Health (DoH); they may face debt
problems—with the Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills (BIS) holding most of the budget to tackle such issues,
and they may experience unemployment—a Department for Work
and Pensions (DWP) issue.
Governance arrangements to support
crime reduction
28. There have been a number of noteworthy
changes to national and local governance arrangements to support
crime reduction since 2010.
THE NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE BOARD
29. A National Criminal Justice Board
has been established by the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice
and Victims to "advise him on the strategy for the criminal
justice system and support him in better driving cross-criminal
justice system performance" with a view to looking at the
'whole system' rather than just the individual components of it.[60]
The Minister's position, straddling the Home Office and Ministry
of Justice, is an illustration of this intention to look across
the whole system.[61]
This aspiration is supported by an action plan Transforming
the criminal justice system published in June 2013, three
months after our inquiry commenced.[62]
The plan identifies crimes where there is evidence of systemic
failure in how the criminal justice process tackles them, or which
have a particularly devastating effect on victims, because of
either the nature of the crime or the vulnerability of the victim
or a witness. These crimes, which require a national response
and action to improve performance, are:
· violence against women and
girls and child sexual abuse;
· hate crime; and,
· gun and knife crime.
Other priority areas are digitalisation
(improving technology to accelerate the flow of information and
generate efficiencies), diversity and partnership working. Seven
shared outcomes are specified for criminal justice agencies, which
include reduced crime and reduced re-offending. Although a broader
Inter-Ministerial Group on Reducing Re-offending, which drove
cross-departmental work on reducing re-offending from 2004, no
longer exists, a new Group has been created to focus on gangs
and youth violence. In Wales many of the levers used in crime
reduction such as housing, health and education fall within the
remit of the Welsh Government.
ELECTED POLICE AND CRIME COMMISSIONERS
30. At a local level, elected Police
and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) have been introduced into the complex
landscape of individual agency and partnership commissioning activity
to reduce crime and re-offending.[63]
Each PCC has published a police and crime plan in which they set
out their strategic priorities for the duration of their tenure.
PCCs have a role in ensuring that criminal justice agencies,
local authorities and other partners, including health services,
work together effectively and efficiently to reduce crime. Local
criminal justice boards (LCJBs), which bring together representatives
of criminal justice agencies, ceased to receive central government
funding in April 2011, but continue to operate in most areas.
Community safety partnerships and PCCs are required to cooperate
with each other and to have regard to each other's plans.[64]
31. PCCs are responsible for administering
a Home Office Community Safety Fund (CSF) which replaced the vast
majority of existing Home Office drugs, crime and community safety
funding streams. The CSF is not ring-fenced and PCCs can use
it to commission services that help tackle drugs and crime, reduce
re-offending, and improve community safety in their area. The
allocations of the CSF were based on the existing distribution
of drugs, crime and community safety grants across police forces.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
32. There have also been some relevant
changes to the role of local authorities. In particular, responsibility
for public health, including drug and alcohol treatment, has been
transferred to them from the NHS. Health and Well-being Boards
have been created to integrate better local government and health
services' approach to public health, although criminal justice
representation on the board is not statutory. A national and regional
approach has recently been adopted for the commissioning of some
aspects of offender health, in particular in prisons, the youth
custodial estate and other accommodation including police custody
suites (previously the responsibility of the police) and courts.[65]
The Government's approach to
reducing the costs of the criminal justice system
33. The Ministry of Justice is in many
respects a demand-led department. Demand for prison places and
probation services is fed by the criminal courts which are in
turn fed by the police and prosecution services which are in turn
fed by the incidence of crime. This presents particular challenges
both in making spending reductions and in channelling resources
effectively into reducing re-offending. Our predecessor Committee
proposed in its report Cutting crime: the case for justice
reinvestment, that faced with both a fiscal crisis and a seemingly
growing prison population, the costs of which dominated the Ministry's
budget, the post-2010 Government should seize the opportunity
to place the penal system on a more sustainable footing by seeking
to reduce demand on the system, in particular prison numbers,
rather than pursuing a "predict and provide" policy.[66]
As that Committee pointed out, such a "predict and provide"
approach is only applied to custody and not to provision for other
forms of sentence which the court may regard as likely to be effective.
The Committee was concerned that the Ministry was overly focused
on how each individual service could continue to function with
reduced resources rather than assessing the most effective allocation
of resources across the system as a whole. They stated that efficiency
savings would "undoubtedly undermine" the performance
of prisons and probation services, and that this approach was
therefore unsustainable.[67]
34. NOMS and the Ministry of Justice
state that they are seeking to "deliver a transformed justice
system and a transformed Department which is more effective, less
costly and more responsive to the public".[68]
In seeking to achieve this, the Ministry has, broadly speaking,
adopted reforms specific to each criminal justice agency, rather
than adopting a truly whole system approach. For example, in relation
to HM Courts and Tribunals Service, measures have included savings
to the costs of administering the Service through a programme
of court closures, and bringing offenders to justice more quickly
under a package of measures designed to deliver 'swift and sure'
justice.[69]
35. Under the Transforming Rehabilitation
reforms, the Government is making large-scale structural changes
to the commissioning of probation services with the intention
of using the savings achieved to extend the reach of probation
supervision to those serving short prison sentences. The Secretary
of State intends that this will improve the long-term sustainability
of the system by bringing down re-offending, but he has not published
any modelling of projections to support this.[70]
As we concluded in our interim report on this inquiry, in the
absence of published projections of the likely reductions in reoffending
or estimates of how this might impact on the future costs of the
system, it is not possible to predict whether or not savings will
be swallowed up by increased demand on the prison system together
with reduced funding of existing services by statutory partners
and other funders.[71]
36. Rather than seeking to reduce demand
on the system and hence the costly use of imprisonment, as our
predecessor Committee proposed, the current Justice Secretary's
approach has been to focus on reducing the cost base rather than
seeking to reduce the use of imprisonment or demand on it per
se. Mr Grayling told us in November 2012:
I do not want a criminal justice
system, prison system and system of community sentences where
effectively the message to the courts is, "Look, you can't
actually sentence that person to what you want to sentence him
to because we don't have the money to pay for it." That would
be a disastrous position for our criminal justice system to be
in. We have to do things in a smarter and more cost-effective
way. If you look within the prison system, there is a huge variation
in the cost of keeping people in different prisons […] I
think it is about making prison cheaper and not having less prison.[72]
Accordingly, the Government has embarked
on a £450 million programme of efficiency savings by benchmarking
provision across the public prison estate and sought to replace
old and inefficient prison accommodation with new facilities yielding
lower costs per prison place.
CHANGES IN THE PRISON POPULATION
37. The growth rate of the prison population
has slowed since our predecessor's report, and is currently relatively
stable. The overall prison population in June 2010 was 85,400,
remarkably similar to the 85,285 in custody on 4 April 2014. It
should be noted that there have been fluctuations over this period,
including an all-time high of 88,179 prisoners in December 2011.[73]
Between 2011 and 2013, there was a 28% reduction in the use of
community orders.[74]
38. The apparent stabilising of numbers
is also illustrated in prison population projections which have
fallen significantly over the last four years. In August 2009,
it was projected that by the end of June 2014 the demand for prison
spaces would be between 83,500 and 92,400; by November 2013, the
corresponding projections had been lowered to between 82,600 and
84,300. The revised projections were related to: a falling remand
population, (following restrictions introduced in the Legal Aid,
Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012); a decline in
the number of under 18s in custody; and falling volumes going
through courts.[75] Mid-range
projections for the next five years indicate that there will be
81,800 in prison by December 2019.[76]
39. The previous Committee wished to
clarify the cause of the "seemingly inexorable" rise
in the prison population, in particular the extent to which it
could be ascribed to policy change. The Ministry has published
detailed analysis of the growth in the prison population since
1993 which confirmed that both tougher sentencing and enforcement
outcomes, and a more serious mix of offence groups coming before
the courts had contributed to the rise.[77]
40. Decisions to reverse the growth
can be politically challenging, as highlighted by this example
from the NAO's Landscape Review:
In 2010, the government proposed
sentencing reforms expected to result in around 6,000 fewer prison
places, leading to £324 million savings. However, in June
2011, it decided not to proceed with some of the proposals. The
estimated number of prison places that the Ministry could close
through revised sentencing reforms reduced to 2,000, foregoing
£134 million of savings from reform.[78]
The former Secretary of State's approach
to these reforms had been to develop more "intelligent sentencing"
and cease "endlessly and irresponsibly inflating prison numbers
for their own sake". One of these proposals, to offer 50%
sentence discounts to offenders who submit early guilty pleas,
was not well received and was abandoned. Nevertheless, the Government
has taken some steps to curb the unnecessary, or unjust, use of
imprisonment in particular by placing restrictions on the imposition
of custodial remand where the offence carries no real prospect
of imprisonment, and by abolishing the indeterminate sentence
for public protection (IPP).[79]
41. On the other hand, the "cheaper
not smaller" approach to reducing the costs of imprisonment
discussed above has resulted in the creation of just the large
scale institutions that the Committee warned against in its report.
For example, almost a quarter of establishments now hold over
1,000 prisoners, with half of these holding over 1,200, and the
proposed prison in Wrexham is planned to provide some 2,000 places.[80]
Some witnesses expressed concerns about the size of some prison
establishments.[81] We
will consider these questions further in our new inquiry into
Prisons: planning and policies.
42. The broader question posed by
our predecessor Committee of whether the incapacitation benefits
of putting people into prison for longer can achieve reductions
in crime rates which are justified by the costs of doing so, taking
into account also the sometimes counterproductive impact of imprisonment
on reoffending, remains largely unanswered. Research commissioned
by Civitas goes some way to developing such an answer, in particular
for the crimes of burglary and fraud: a 1% increase in sentence
decreased burglary by 0.08% and fraud by 0.2%. However, the researchers
was unable to tease out incapacitation from deterrent effects,
or distinguish between the relative merits of custodial vs. community
sentences in terms of the reduction of reoffending, and they did
not consider the cost-benefit implications of their findings.[82]
The incapacitation benefit appears small relative to the cost
of imprisonment and would be gained by drawing on funds which
could otherwise be used to tackle the causes and sources of criminal
behaviour. Furthermore, Ministry of Justice data on the outcome
of different sentences on re-offending shows the complexity of
unpicking their relative impact. While shorter custodial sentences
have higher re-offending rates than longer ones, offenders sentenced
to prison sentences of less than 12 months had a higher re-offending
rate by 6.8% points than similar offenders receiving a community-based
court order, and offenders receiving conditional discharges re-offended
at lower rates than similar offenders who received a community
order or a fine.[83]
43. Prison sentences and the different
length of prison sentences applied to different crimes are seen
by the public as a measure of how seriously society regards different
crimes, but if custody is treated as the only means of expressing
society's disapproval, it will remain difficult to achieve effective
sentencing. Wider understanding of the severity of some robust
community sentences and supervision requirements is one element
that will be required to change this perception.
Crime reduction initiatives
Efforts to implement payment
by results
44. Early in this Parliament, the Ministry
commenced a series of payment by results pilots, some of which
took a justice reinvestment approach: they aimed to incentivise
local statutory partners to reduce demand on courts, legal aid,
prisons and probation and, consequently, reduce the costs on the
justice system. Although some of the other payment by results
pilots were suspended, the justice reinvestment pilots were permitted
to run to their conclusion in July 2013. We discuss the results
of these in the final chapter.
Early intervention
45. The Government has acknowledged
that there is strong evidence that intervening early in the lives
of young people, before behaviour becomes entrenched, or when
problems first begin to emerge, can present the best chance of
breaking the crime cycle.[84]
It has sought to develop a series of cross-government approaches
to early intervention and preventing youth crime, for example,
through the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme, the Troubled
Families' programme, and Family Nurse Partnerships, each of which
is described briefly below.
ENDING GANG AND YOUTH VIOLENCE PROGRAMME
46. Violence
is estimated to cost the NHS £2.9 billion every year. This
figure underestimates the total impact of violence on health as,
for instance, exposure to violence as a child can increase risks
of substance abuse, obesity and illnesses such as cancer and heart
disease in later life. Thus the total costs of violence to society
are estimated at £29.9 billion per year.[85]
Under the Ending Gang and Youth Violence strategy the Home
Office invested £10 million to enable 33 localities with
the highest levels of gang and youth violence to implement improvements
to the way they responded to youth violence, in conjunction with
a national team of experts. In 2013-14, the Home Office transferred
community safety funding to Police and Crime Commissioners, which
they can use to invest in local priorities, including youth violence.
There have been falls in police recorded youth violence across
the areas targeted, taken as a whole, since the programme began,
although these reductions cannot be linked directly to it. This
has occurred against the background of national falls in levels
of violent crime.[86]
THE TROUBLED FAMILIES PROGRAMME
47. The £448 million Troubled Families
programme has been established to join up efforts to support 120,000
such families by 2015—defined by the Department for Local
Government and Communities (DCLG) as those that have problems
and cause problems to the community around them—by helping
local authorities to drive forward family interventions through
a payment by results approach. Six government departments have
contributed the central funding to the scheme, which represents
40% of the average cost required, with the remaining 60% coming
from local budgets. In May 2014 the Government stated that almost
40,000 families had been "turned around" through the
initiative.[87]
FAMILY NURSE PARTNERSHIPS
48. The Family Nurse Partnership is
a voluntary home visiting programme for first time young parents,
aged 19 or under. A specially trained family nurse visits the
young mother regularly, from early in pregnancy until the child
is two. The programme is underpinned by an internationally recognised
and robust evidence base, which shows such an approach can improve
health, social and educational outcomes in the short, medium and
long term, while also providing cost benefits. A review of thirty
years of research in the United States has shown a 59% reduction
in arrests and a 90% reduction in supervision orders by age 15
for the children of mothers helped by such programmes. In the
light of its potential for long-term violence reduction, the Government
committed to double the capacity of the programme as part of its
work on gang and youth violence. We visited an example of this
in Houston, Texas, where it is known as Nurse-Family Partnership.
Efforts to improve the evidence-base
49. The Committee in 2010 recommended
an independent cross-disciplinary national crime reduction centre
of excellence, akin to the National Institute for Health and Clinical
Excellence (NICE).[88]
In its response the then Government cited examples of partnerships
between the academic community and the Government in implementing
a more evidence-based approach to crime and justice policy, including
the Correctional Services Accreditation Panel and the Campbell
Collaboration crime and justice group.[89]
The then Government agreed that the evidence base in crime and
justice policy could be improved further and stated that it would
"continue to explore whether we need to fund new national
centres of research excellence to help generate and disseminate
evidence on what works. This will need to take account of the
potential costs involved and [ensure] that any such undertaking
represents value for money."[90]
50. Since then there have been some
related developments. The What Works Centre for Crime Reduction
has been established, hosted by the College of Policing, and supported
by a group of academic institutions. This is a three-year programme,
which started in September 2013, that will: review research on
practices and interventions to reduce crime; label the evidence
base in terms of quality, cost and impact; and provide Police
and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and other crime reduction stakeholders
with the knowledge, tools and guidance to help them target their
resources more effectively. The Government explained the College's
role: "It will equip [the police] with the skills they need
to continue to reduce crime and protect the public. The College
will build close links with academia and establish an effective
evidence base for policing effectiveness and, in its role as a
designated What Works Centre, understanding crime and how best
it can be reduced."[91]
51. There are other initiatives which
are seeking to bring together research and develop professional
expertise. As part of the Transforming Rehabilitation programme
the Ministry is seeking to open up and disseminate the data which
providers need to ensure their approaches have the greatest impact
on reducing reoffending. For example, it has produced a series
of rapid evidence assessments which set out the strengths and
weaknesses of the current evidence base, and established the Justice
Data Lab, a pilot initiative which provides organisations working
with offenders with the opportunity to evidence how effective
their work is at reducing reoffending.[92]
Nevertheless, in many cases the Lab has found insufficient evidence
to draw any conclusion about the impact of the work in question
on reoffending.[93] The
Ministry has also agreed to provide some initial financial support
to the Probation Institute—a joint initiative of the Probation
Association, Probation Chiefs Association, Napo and UNISON which
was established in March 2014 to "safeguard professional
standards and act as a centre of excellence". In terms of
the latter aim it is intended that the Institute will apply "rigorous
standards to the assessment of research and other evidence and
its implications for the delivery of services that protect the
public and rehabilitate offenders."[94]
Jeremy Wright conceded that while much is known about the factors
that are relevant to determining the likelihood of reoffending,
there is a need to draw together the evidence on what is most
effective when these are applied in practice.[95]
In relation to the question of whether there is a need for a single
centre of excellence, Mr Wright believed that the first step was
to ensure that there was a centre focused on rehabilitation, to
complement that related to policing.[96]
59 Ministry of Justice (PPC0014) Back
60
Ibid. Back
61
Q500 [Norman Baker MP] Back
62
Ministry of Justice, Transforming the CJS a Strategy and Action
Plan to Reform the Criminal Justice System, Cm 8658, June
2013 Back
63
Police and Crime Commissioners are elected representatives charged
with securing efficient and effective policing of police areas
in England and Wales. The post was created under the Police Reform
and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and the first incumbents were
elected on 15 November 2012, taking office a week later. Commissioners
replaced the now abolished police authorities. Back
64
Home Office guidance, Police and Crime Commissioners and Community
Safety Partnerships, accessed 12 June 2014. Section 6 of the
1998 Crime and Disorder Act requires the responsible authorities
(commonly referred to collectively as a Community Safety Partnership
(CSP)) in a local government area to work together in formulating
and implementing strategies to tackle local crime and disorder
in the area. Back
65
The NHS Commissioning Board has published a single operating model
for the commissioning of such services. From April 2013, the stated
intention of the Board and its four regional teams has been to
"move away from regionally and locally isolated commissioning
to a clear and consistent national approach, with national standards
based on the best available evidence to ensure efficient provision
of care, and improved health outcomes." The Board will move
towards contracting services nationally within a set of service
specifications, standards, policies and quality measures. In an
effort to ensure that local decisions about services are made
as close to health communities as possible, 10 area teams of the
Board will take on the responsibility across England for contracting
and the delivery of services for people in prison, other secure
accommodation and for victims of sexual assault. See NHS Commissioning
Board, Securing Excellence in Commissioning for Offender Health,
February 2013 Back
66
Justice Committee, First Report of Session 2009-10, Cutting
crime: the case for justice reinvestment, HC 94-I, para 96 Back
67
Ibid, para 87 Back
68
Ministry of Justice (PPC0014) Back
69
Ministry of Justice, Swift and Sure Justice: the Government's
plans for Reform of the Criminal Justice System
Cm 8388, July 2012 Back
70
Qq179, 187 Back
71
Justice Committee, Twelfth Report of Session 2013-14, Crime
reduction policies: a co-ordinated approach? Interim report on
the Government's Transforming Rehabilitation programme, HC
1004, para 35 Back
72
Oral evidence taken on 28 November 2012, HC (2012-13) 741-i, Q11
Back
73
This rise was partially, though not wholly, explained by the remanding
and sentencing of people suspected of, and convicted of, being
involved in the August 2011 riots. Prison Population Statistics,
Standard Note SN/SG/4334, House of Commons Library, 29 July 2013.The
overall prison population includes males and females held in prisons
and young offender institutions. Back
74
Nacro (PPC0038) Back
75
Ministry of Justice, 2014, Prison population projections 2013-2019
England and Wales Back
76
Ibid. Back
77
Ministry of Justice, 2012, The story of the prison population
1993 to 2012 Back
78
National Audit Office, The criminal justice system: landscape
review, HC 1098, March 2014, p.14 Back
79
Prison Reform Trust (PPC0013) Back
80
Derived from Prison Population Monthly Bulletin April 2014, accessed
12 June 2014 Back
81
See for example Rob Allen (PPC0020), Qq392-395 [Mr Hardwick, Mr
McLennan-Murray] Back
82
Bandyopadhyay, S. (2012) Acquisitive Crime: Imprisonment, Detection
and Social Factors, Civitas Back
83
Ministry of Justice, 2013 Compendium of re-offending statistics
and analysis, July 2013. Back
84
Ministry of Justice (PPC0014) Back
85
Department of Health, Protecting People, Promoting Health: A public
health approach to violence prevention for England , October 2012
These figures relate to England only. Back
86
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/278779/EndingGangYouthViolence2013.pdf
Back
87
Prime Minister welcomes Troubled Families progress. The measure
of success relates to self-declaration by the local authority
concerned of 1) the number of families achieving crime/anti-social
behaviour/education result as at the end of March 2014 defined
as each child in the family having had fewer than 3 fixed exclusions
and less than 15% of unauthorised absences in the last 3 school
terms; and a 60% reduction in anti-social behaviour across the
family in the last 6 months; and the offending rate by all minors
in the family reduced by at least 33% in the last 6 months and
2) the number of families achieving continuous employment result
defined as at least one adult in the family having moved off out-of-work
benefits into continuous employment in the last 6 months (and
is not on the European Social Fund Provision or Work Programme
to avoid double-payment).https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/11469/2117840.pdf Back
88
Justice Committee, First Report of Session 2009-10, Cutting
crime: the case for justice reinvestment, HC 94-I,
para 301 Back
89
Ministry of Justice, Government response to the Justice Committee's
Report: Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment, Cm
7819, March 2010. The Correctional Services Accreditation Panel
helps the Ministry of Justice and NOMS to develop and implement
high quality offender behaviour programmes and promotes excellence
in programme design. Its main work is to use an evidence based
approach to accredit programmes designed to reduce re-offending.
Applications are assessed against a set of accreditation criteria
derived from the lessons learnt from international research about
what works in reducing re-offending. The Campbell Collaboration
crime and justice group is an international network of researchers
that prepares and disseminates systematic reviews of high-quality
research on methods to reduce crime and delinquency and improve
the quality of justice. Back
90
Ibid. Back
91
Ministry of Justice (PPC0014) Back
92
Qq516-517 Back
93
See, for example, Justice Data Lab Pilot Statistics, accessed
12 June 2014 Back
94
Probation Institute brochure, Probation Institute: Promoting
excellence throughout the offender rehabilitation sector,
accessed 12 June 2014 Back
95
Q516 Back
96
Q518 Back
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