I just got back from an interesting roundtable discussion on payment by results and re-offending convened by IPPR. I cam away with two main thoughts. Is there really no alternative to the MoJ’s cumbersome cohort approach to calculating PbR? And who is going to provide on the ground leadership for the rehabilitation revolution in a centrally commissioned model with a much reduced probation service?
Finally Friday is an occasional series of posts which look at the lighter side of life. In particular, I delight in rounding up examples of criminals whose own stupidity is the main reason they were brought to justice. There have been a couple of distinctive examples over the last month featuring drug dealers and reckless drivers who incriminated themselves in ways only available in the digital age.
Payment by results has been getting a fairly consistent bad press recently with concerns about the funding mechanism’s use in the Work Programme, Drug Recovery pilots and worries about how it will work for the new reducing reoffending contracts.
So it was refreshing for me to see an example of a successful (albeit smallscale) example of PbR at last week’s No Offence (@NoOffenceCiC) conference. West Yorkshire succeeded in driving down their youth custody rate by a third through a PbR approach.
Is the MoJ getting serious about a diverse supply chain? Conscious of the criticism of the
The internet has revolutionised the way that drugs are created and sold. There is an increasing number of online drug dealing sites and now treatment is getting in on the online act with a proliferation of computer assisted therapies.
Earlier this week, the MoJ published the findings from the first evaluation of the justice reinvestment project conducted by Kevin Wong and his colleagues from Sheffield Hallam University. The pilot operates a payment by results approach which means that if the pilot areas succeed in reducing demand on criminal justice services (by 5% for adults and 10% for young offenders), they receive additional funds generated by the savings to invest in further reducing re-offending initiatives.
The publication of the MoJ’s response to Transforming Rehabilitation last Thursday 9 May has made it almost certain that the plans to overhaul the reducing reoffending system will take place.
By bringing the timeline even further forward, the Secretary of State has built in 6 months’ slippage before next general election.
Even if the Labour Party wins the next election, there is no sign that @SadiqKhan would undo the changes.
Sitra, the housing support training and consultancy organisation, produced a short but interesting report this week
Timeline for the government’s “Transforming Rehabilitation” project which involves the most radical change ever to, and significant privatisation of, the probation service and new focus on short term prisoners.
Police Inspector @SimonJGuilfoyle says Twitter proves men can multi-task. One thing I particularly like about twitter is that it affords the previously unheard of opportunity to interact with people at all levels in police forces, as well as those from totally different backgrounds, locations and viewpoints. I’ve had some great debates with a range of extremely interesting people, without the formalities inherent in hierarchies or social constructs.
Social media – and Twitter in particular – is becoming the mainstream way of locating missing people. I was slightly surprised when I reviewed five UK police Facebook pages recently and found that a third of the most popular posts related to missing persons. It’s no surprise that police use social media for this purpose though. I’ve come across two successful outcomes in the last month.
The dramatic changes proposed for the probation service have yet to receive any detailed planning. Indeed, we still don’t know how many probation trust areas there will be, how many Contract Package Areas and the nature of the relationship between the future statutory probation service with its responsibility for risk and the new providers who will be delivering interventions to reduce re-offending. We are expecting some answers to these questions in the middle of May but …
