The Ministry of Justice is piloting Payment by Results to try to prevent prisoners from reoffending. But experiments so far have not proved a success and it remains questionable whether this is an appropriate model
Last year I wrote for the PF Blog on the introduction of payment by results in criminal justice, expressing the Howard League’s reservations as to whether this was the magic bullet solution to the crisis in our overcrowded prisons and probation service. Since then, the Ministry of Justice has been pressing ahead with implementing a number of pilots. As ever in public policy, it is instructive to see whether the rhetoric and reality are closely aligned.
The rhetoric promises a new approach to prisons and probation, and indeed public services across government. The challenge for PbR lies less in the principle but in the practice, with concerns ranging from measuring results to fears that it may encourage cherry-picking by providers.
In relation to that concern, I drew attention to Project Daedalus and the Heron Unit at Feltham young offenders’ institution. This Boris Johnson-backed scheme focused on preparing young people for release after prison and selected participants who could demonstrate a willingness and motivation to change, rather than the traditional approach of prioritising resources based on vulnerability and needs.
As an early poster boy for PbR, Project Daedalus has not fared well. The Mayor of London ran into difficulties with the UK Statistics Authority when he was found to be over-claiming on the project’s reconviction rates. It was recently announced that the project was coming to an end and that the Heron Unit would not continue operating on a PbR basis.
Intriguingly, BBC London has revealed that a report from the evaluation team was substantially altered before publication. The original draft claimed the project suffered because the PbR approach denied providers sufficient money upfront. But this and other criticisms, including an entire section on PbR, were removed from the published report.
It would be unfair however to conclude from this one example that the drive towards PbR is doomed. In truth, the pilots now being run by the Ministry of Justice differ substantially from the model used at Feltham. Ministers have wisely refused to place all their PbR eggs in one basket, and the new pilots include a wide variety of approaches.
Pilots in the adult system can be broadly divided into two approaches: an institutional model of PbR and a place-based model.
The institutional model of PbR is based on individual prisons and focuses on holding the prisons to account for the reoffending rates of those prisoners leaving the institutions. Two pilots are already underway with private sector prisons: Peterborough and Doncaster, with Leeds and High Down following in the public sector.
The place-based model is based on the principles of justice reinvestment, a movement originating in the US that the Howard League has championed. Justice reinvestment recognises that the solutions to crime often lie outside the criminal justice system. It seeks to engage all agencies working in particular areas in efforts to pool resources and ideally divert money into investing in measures that prevent crime, rather than simply manage its consequences.
Two justice reinvestment pilots are taking place in Manchester and in London. There are hopes these may align with further pilots taking place across government that will test the Whole Place Community Budget concept.
Finally, sitting somewhat between the two models are PbR pilots in probation. Two probation trusts, Wales and Staffordshire & West Midlands, are working on developing PbR approaches for their work in the community. As with the public sector prisons engaging in PbR, the probation trusts are likely to seek partnerships with external providers who can assume financial risks that the public sector cannot.
It is less a matter then of recognising the gap between rhetoric and reality when it comes to PbR, as recognising that there are many different realities being piloted by the Ministry of Justice. This is on top of cross-governmental work being done on introducing PbR into drug and alcohol recovery and mental health, both particularly pertinent to the world of prisons and probation.
Not all approaches are likely to succeed, and there are issues as to how some of what is going on could ever go to scale. In the institutional model, for example, it may be relatively easy to sufficiently ring fence the populations of individual pilot prisons in order to keep track of interventions and results. But, across the prison estate as a whole, overcrowding means a constant churn of prisoners, and widespread movement of individuals in order to make space where it is required.
Quite how a particular prison can then be held to account for a particular prisoner’s reoffending remains an unanswered challenge.
At a conference on PbR that I chaired last week, the problem which all the pilots raised was the Ministry of Justice’s insistence on using a binary yes/no measure of reoffending, rather than a more sophisticated measure that captures the severity and frequency of reoffending. The binary measure may make sense when trying to quantify what savings the department might be achieving in order to reward providers, but does it recognise the complex pathways to desistance that individuals in the real world face?
PbR is certainly encouraging innovation and if it proves to be a vehicle for delivering an important agenda like justice reinvestment, then all this effort may be worthwhile. It is questionable, however, whether PbR in itself is necessary, or whether it is simply the political flavour of the month, which others are using in order to advance their own agendas.
Perhaps that is the point. But, as George Bernard Shaw once wrote of penal reform: ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’. Ministers would do well to bear this in mind.
Andrew Neilson is director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform
