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Cutting Crime: the Case for Justice Reinvestment

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Cutting Crime: the Case for Justice Reinvestment House of Commons Justice Committee Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment First Report of Session 2009–10 Volume I Report, together with formal minutes Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 1 December 2009 HC 94-I Published on 14 January 2010 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 The Justice Committee The Justice Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Ministry of Justice and its associated public bodies (including the work of staff provided for the administrative work of courts and tribunals, but excluding consideration of individual cases and appointments, and excluding the work of the Scotland and Wales Offices and of the Advocate General for Scotland); and administration and expenditure of the Attorney General's Office, the Treasury Solicitor's Department, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office (but excluding individual cases and appointments and advice given within government by Law Officers). Current membership Rt Hon Sir Alan Beith MP (Liberal Democrat, Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Chairman) David Heath MP (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome) Rt Hon Douglas Hogg MP (Conservative, Sleaford and North Hykeham) Siân James MP (Labour, Swansea East) Jessica Morden MP (Labour, Newport East) Julie Morgan MP (Labour, Cardiff North) Rt Hon Alun Michael MP (Labour and Co-operative, Cardiff South and Penarth) Robert Neill MP (Conservative, Bromley and Chislehurst) Dr Nick Palmer MP (Labour, Broxtowe) Linda Riordan MP (Labour and Co-operative, Halifax) Virendra Sharma MP (Labour, Ealing Southall) Andrew Turner MP (Conservative, Isle of Wight) Andrew Tyrie MP (Conservative, Chichester) Dr Alan Whitehead MP (Labour, Southampton Test) Powers The committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the internet at www.parliament.uk/justicecom Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Fergus Reid (Clerk); Dr Sarah Thatcher (Second Clerk); Gemma Buckland (Committee Specialist); Hannah Stewart (Committee Legal Specialist); Ana Ferreira (Senior Committee Assistant); Sonia Draper (Committee Assistant); Henry Ayi-Hyde (Committee Support Assistant); and Jessica Bridges-Palmer (Committee Media Officer). Contacts Correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Justice Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 8196 and the email address is [email protected] Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment 1 Contents Report Page Summary 5 Conclusions and recommendations 9 1 Introduction 24 Justice reinvestment 26 Conduct of the inquiry 28 2 Background 29 Recent relevant reports 29 Government policies 30 Use of custody 33 Developments in Scotland 35 Titan Prisons 35 The Sentencing Council and the Coroners and Justice Act 39 Reform of the governance of the criminal justice system 40 Building mainstream provision to reduce crime and re-offending 42 Governance 43 3 The sustainability of the current system 45 Expenditure on prisons and probation 45 The National Offender Management Service 45 Efficiency savings 46 The impact on capacity 47 The capacity of the courts 48 The capacity of prisons 49 The capacity of probation 50 The capacity of youth offending teams 53 Costs of system expansion 54 Effectiveness of prison and probation programmes in reducing crime 56 Cost-effectiveness and social impact of the current system 61 4 Balance between punishment and reform 69 Weaknesses in the capacity of the system 73 Potentially rehabilitative measures not yet implemented 74 Implementing the 2003 restorative justice strategy 74 Community prisons 75 Reform of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 76 Slow progress reform for particular groups of offenders 77 Progress on the Corston and Bradley reports 77 Alternatives for short-sentenced prisoners 79 More appropriate provision for young adult offenders 82 Coherence of criminal justice policy 82 Placing victims at the heart of the system means working to reform offenders 83 2 Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment Integrated crime reduction and reducing re-offending strategies 86 Cross-departmental accountability 88 Capacity to prioritise resources 89 5 Drivers of system expansion 92 The ‘politics’ of criminal justice policy 93 Public opinion, politics and the media 95 Public demand 95 Public priorities for criminal justice 97 The role of the media in shaping public opinion 99 Building a political consensus 103 6 Blueprint for the future: justice reinvestment 108 Introduction 108 Justice reinvestment in England and Wales 109 Support for a more rational use of resources 109 Devolution of funding 109 Localised approaches which benefit victims and communities 111 Regional and local structures to facilitate reinvestment 113 Integrated Offender Management 115 Building on existing initiatives 117 The four stages of justice reinvestment 118 Stage 1: Justice mapping 118 Strengthening the methodology for local strategic planning 120 The value of justice mapping 122 Stage 2: Devising options for policy makers 127 Identifying the policymakers 127 A mechanism for generating options for policy-makers 129 Healthcare experience of linking policy and resources 129 The quality of research evidence on cost-effectiveness 130 Applying the evidence to reduce the expansion of the criminal justice system 132 Strengthening the evidence base 133 Building capacity for policy-makers to use evidence 136 Stage 3: Quantify savings and reinvest in select high-stakes communities 137 Shifting resources to facilitate reinvestment at national level 137 Existing mechanisms for reallocating resources at local level 140 Performance incentives 140 Devolution of funding to local authorities 144 Creating financial incentives for reinvestment 147 New local structures 152 Stage 4: Measuring the impact of justice reinvestment approaches 153 Existing performance measures 154 More sophisticated measures to assess outcomes 155 Financing alternative schemes 158 7 Other components of a more sustainable justice system 159 Engagement with the public 159 Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment 3 A national debate on spending on criminal justice 159 Challenging the media reporting of criminal justice policy 161 Building public confidence in the system 162 Public ownership of local problems 164 Community engagement in commissioning 166 Public understanding of the costs of imprisonment 168 Sentencing and Resources 169 The Sentencing Guidelines Council and Sentencing Advisory Panel 169 The Sentencing Council 170 Challenges for the Sentencing Council 171 Promoting ‘what works’ in sentencing 171 Shortcomings in the data on sentencing 173 Promoting cost-effective sentencing 174 Locally responsive sentencing 177 Promoting the confidence of magistrates and judges in community sentences 179 Investment in making prison ‘work’ 182 Investment in community provision to reduce crime 185 The relationship between local criminal justice boards, crime and disorder reduction partnerships and local strategic partnerships, and their component agencies. 188 Annex 1: Implementing the reducing re-offending agenda 182 Annex 2: Local performance frameworks 188 Annex 3: Glossary of terms 190 Annex 4: Justice Reinvestment e-consultation 194 Annex 5: Quick reference guide to witnesses for oral evidence and others quoted in the Report 220 Formal Minutes 222 Witnesses (page numbers refer to Vol II) 223 List of written evidence 226 Reports from the Justice Committee since Session 2007–08 227 Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment 5 Summary We decided to undertake an inquiry into “justice reinvestment”, because of three linked issues. First, the criminal justice system is a complex network of agencies with substantial public funding operating under increasing pressure but the different parts of the system do not seem to be pursuing the same goals or making cogent contributions to an agreed overarching purpose. Secondly, the Government’s main answer to the current over- crowding of prisons and the predicted rise in the prison population—already at a record high—is to provide more prison places rather than to seek to address the root causes of this seemingly incessant growth. These causes include: a toxic cocktail of sensationalised or inaccurate reporting of difficult cases by the media; relatively punitive overall public opinion (compared to much of the EU); a self-defeating over-politicisation of criminal justice policy since the late 1980s and the responsiveness to all these factors of the sentencing framework and sentencers. Thirdly, it is clear that authorities and agencies outside the criminal justice system—with relevant objectives, remits and funding—could take more effective action to reduce both the number of people entering the criminal justice system in the first place and the likelihood of re-entry after serving a sentence. So questions arise as to whether the existing allocation of attention, energy and funding is the right one. “Justice reinvestment” approaches—which channel resources on a geographically-targeted basis to reduce the crimes which bring people into the criminal justice
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