The 5th Commandment of Payment by Results: Thou shall not pay for deadweight
Payment by results is about driving improvement, so no self-respecting PBR scheme will pay for results that will happen anyway, known in the jargon is “deadweight”. The proportion of deadweight in a PbR funded initiative varies markedly across different spheres of operation. Despite all the adverse publicity about reoffending rates which has accompanied the debate about the Rehabilitation Revolution, 65.8% of those supervised in the community and 53.1% of those released from prison do NOT re-offend in the first year. However, when we look at the Work Programme…