Overlapping conditions of offenders and people who use social care

Many offenders have multiple and complex needs that are shared by people who use social care services. For example, it is estimated that approximately 90 per cent of prisoners have a psychosis, a neurosis, a personality disorder or a substance misuse problem (Singleton et al., Reference Singleton, Meltzer and Gatward1998). Whereas about 8 per cent of the general population is considered to have a learning disability or a ‘borderline’ learning disability (Emerson et al., Reference Emerson, Hatton, Robertson, Roberts, Baines and Glover2010), a recent study in three prisons in England found that 32 per cent would be considered to have a learning disability or be borderline (Mottram, Reference Mottram2007). Older prisoners are a significant and rapidly growing minority within the prison population. The Prison Reform Trust (2012) reports that in 2011, there were 8,125 prisoners aged 50. This is more than one in ten of the prison population. There were almost 3,000 prisoners aged 60 and over and this group are the fastest-growing age group in the prison estate (ibid.).

Over-reliance on institutional settings

The social care sector used to rely heavily on institutional settings; the criminal justice sector still does. Whilst care homes will remain appropriate for the very frail, especially older people, in neither sector are institutional settings particularly effective at promoting resilience and independence.

Between 1995 and 2009, the prison population in England and Wales grew by 66 per cent (Ministry of Justice, 2009). As of June 2012, it stood at 86,456 (Ministry of Justice, 2012a). However, prison is not particularly effective at reducing crime. Rates of re-offending in the UK are high both for people leaving prison and people on community sentences. It is estimated that 36.2 per cent of adults who are discharged from custody or start a court order under probation supervision are reconvicted in one year (Ministry of Justice, 2011a). The reconviction rate for custodial sentences is 46.8 per cent (ibid.), which rises to 56.8 per cent for custodial sentences of less than one year (ibid.). Looking at the (limited) evidence base on the effectiveness of imprisonment suggests that prison has, at best, only a small impact on overall crime rates (see for instance Liedka et al., 2006; Marvell and Moody, Reference Marvell and Moody1994; Witt and Witte, Reference Witt and Witte2000; Levitt, Reference Levitt1996). Indeed, it has been suggested (Eide, Reference Eide, Bouckaert and De Geest1999) that crime rates vary in a non-linear relationship with the severity of punishment and that, beyond a certain point, an increase in the length of a sentence might even increase the crime rate (see also Shepherd, Reference Shepherd2006; Leidka et al., Reference Liedka, Piehl and Useem2006). Not only is prison ineffective, it is also expensive. The Prison Reform Trust (2012) cites figures of £40,000 per prisoner per year plus £170,000 to build and maintain each new place. Community sentences are less expensive, but still represent a substantial outlay. The National Audit Office (2010) estimated that in 2008 a highly intensive two-year community order would cost £4,200 per offender, while a more typical one would cost £1,400. Following the 2010 spending review, the Ministry of Justice will have to make overall resource savings of 23 per cent in real terms by 2014–15 (Prison Reform Trust, 2012).

Historically, the social care sector also relied heavily on institutional settings. From the early nineteenth century, institutional care for disabled people and people with severe mental health problems, established under the Poor Law, was the dominant model in the UK (English Heritage, undated). Whilst this model had its critics and alternatives, opposition grew after World War II and interventions to help people live in their own homes began to be established in the 1950s. Growth in these approaches was slow and patchy. Activism by disabled people and their families grew in the 1970s. A number of reports, such as the Griffiths Report of 1988, outlined deeply unacceptable conditions of care for adults with learning disabilities (Griffiths, Reference Griffiths1988). The whole principle of disabled and mentally ill people being incarcerated in large institutions, with the commensurate lack of dignity, autonomy or opportunity to pursue an ‘ordinary’ life, was rejected in policy documents (Department for Health, 1989; The National Health Service and Community Care Act, 1990) which outlined the move towards ‘community care’, with people treated as individuals. Use of large long-stay hospitals was replaced by community living arrangements, and smaller care-home settings for those with very high levels of need who could not be supported at home.

A focus on needs and problems

Reducing re-offending is possible. Systematic Reviews show that rehabilitative programmes for offenders based on psychological and behavioural techniques reduce reoffending (see for instance, National Offender Management Service, 2010; Lipsey and Cullen, Reference Lipsey and Cullen2007). Based on this knowledge, the criminal justice system in England and Wales has been redesigned over recent years so programmes follow the Risk, Need and Responsivity (RNR) principles (National Offender Management Service, 2010; Andrews and Bonta, Reference Andrews and Bonta2006). In this model, higher-risk offenders have a broader range of problems that tend to be more deep rooted, so receiving a higher and more intense ‘dose’ of treatment than lower risk offenders (National Offender Management Service, 2010). Treatment has larger effects if it addresses the criminogenic needs of the offender. These are dynamic risk factors that predict subsequent offending behaviour and include antisocial attitudes and peer associations, lack of self control and self-management skills and drug dependency (Lipsey and Cullen, Reference Lipsey and Cullen2007). Research also suggests that effective treatment can bring about change in the targeted criminogenic needs when it is responsive to the learning styles and characteristics of the offenders treated (ibid.). One response to this model has been the development of standardised accredited programmes designed to tackle specific aspects of offender behaviour, many based on cognitive-behavioural therapies. The criteria for access to such programmes are sometimes based on individual readiness or motivation, but more often on the availability of programmes. Ward and Maruna (Reference Ward and Maruna2007) argue that the RNR model is associated with a rather restricted and passive view of human nature and that motivating offenders to change by concentrating on eliminating or modifying their various dynamic risk factors is extremely difficult. They suggest that:

In addition, such approaches can lead to dependency on services rather than resilience. For example, drug treatment programmes are often considered successful if the person uses methadone as a substitute. This in itself creates dependency rather than addressing the lifestyle issues the offender has. Likewise, an offender's accommodation needs can be deemed met if he/she has an address, but if this is sleeping on a friend's sofa, it is unlikely to lead to independent living or reduce the need for support.

Before ‘self-directed support’ became the dominant narrative within the social care sector, a medical model of disability and ageing prevailed that saw disability as an inevitable aspect of certain physical or cognitive impairments, carrying with it low expectations. This went hand in hand with the institutionalised approach of ‘warehousing’ people. The social model of disability, now widely adopted by the sector, is based on a distinction first made by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, who identified society's attitudes towards impairment and the inaccessibility of much of the built environment as factors which are ‘disabling’, rather than impairments themselves (UPIAS, 1976).

Over-centralised approach

In England and Wales, there are a range of systems and processes supporting the current approach to offender management.Footnote ¹ A National Offender Management Model has been developed with the intention of increasing the resources allocated to offenders with greater complexities of sentence and risk (National Offender Management Service, 2005). Effective offender engagement (McNeill and Weaver, Reference McNeill and Weaver2010) and ‘end-to-end’ offender management, where offenders have a single case manager throughout their time in the criminal justice system, is envisaged (National Offender Management Service, 2005). The Offender Assessment System (OASys), introduced in 2001, provides a standardised approach to assessing an offender's risk and needs based on a range of static (i.e., fixed) and dynamic (i.e., changing) factors while the Offender Group Reconviction Scale (OGRS) is an actuarial tool that predicts re-offending based on static risks: age, gender and criminal history (Howard et al., Reference Howard, Francis, Soothill and Humphreys2009). National Standards have been developed to ensure that offender management across England and Wales is consistent and of a high standard.Footnote ²

The result is a criminal justice system more informed by Systematic Reviews of the evidence on what works, more ‘top-down’ and managerialist in terms of the relationship between the central government and local delivery, more prescribed in its approach to offender management and more standardised in terms of the behaviour programmes for offenders. Arguably, such an approach does not give sufficient recognition to individuality. McNeill and Weaver (Reference McNeill and Weaver2010: 4) argue that: ‘Since the process of giving up crime is different for each person, criminal justice responses need to be properly individualised. One-size fits all approaches run the risk of fitting no-one.’

For state social care services, a ‘one size fits all’ approach prevailed during the era of dominance of the institutional model. Social care has not been as centrally organised as criminal justice, but the devolution of commissioning social care did not result in greater creativity or more radical change. Rather, in the absence of a widely understood and adopted policy drive towards de-institutionalisation and latterly, self-directed support, changes in council provision often lagged behind the emerging national policy direction. This was partly addressed by the National Health Service and Community Care Act in 1990, which clarified the expectation of care being delivered in community settings and then in subsequent reports, notably Putting People First (Department of Health, 2007) which set out a vision for personalisation and is described below.

Individual choice and control

One of the most widely known aspects of personalisation is the attempt to give people a wider choice of services and more control over those services through individual control of the money allocated to their support. Personal budgets means that everyone needing council support for care is told how much money the council allocates for their care and given choice in spending this. There are various ways of taking a personal budget, with varying degrees of individual control and commensurate legal responsibility. Direct payments are the ‘purest’ and earliest form of individual control over allocated resources, with direct control over money and all of the associated responsibilities, such as becoming an employer of someone providing a service to the user, though take-up remained low (In Control, 2011). Whilst councils are progressing rapidly towards being able to achieve the government target of 70 per cent personal budget uptake, the increase in Direct Payments appears to have stalled, with around 25 per cent of personal budgets taken as Direct Payments (44 per cent of the money) (Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, 2011).

Some councils appear reluctant to cede genuine budgetary control to individuals, with some local systems involving a high degree of professional input into choosing services, and therefore allocating a commensurate level of resources. Some systems exclude the support needed to make informed choices (Department of Health, 2008). People in some areas report they are unaware of their supposed allocation of personal budget (Daly and Woolham, Reference Daly and Woolham2010). Other areas have constructed long, bureaucratic allocation and sign-off processes (Think Local, Act Personal, 2011; Prabhakar et al., Reference Prabhakar, Thom and Johnson2011; Holloway et al., Reference Holloway, Neville and Watts2011) or appeals processes as the only way to challenge professionally-led estimates of resources needed.

Reforming supply as well as demand

Whilst the introduction of Direct Payments has created one entirely new market of care provision, in the form of Personal Assistants providing personal care, there has not been the explosion of other forms of non-traditional care provision that was expected. Individual control over resources, in most cases, elevates the status of the individual from passive care recipient to consumer, but consumers are not necessarily empowered to shape services. Many consumers of care services are isolated, vulnerable or have communication challenges. Some have little experience of a wide range of service options and many achieve eligibility for social care through being in a crisis, thus needing to make a rapid purchase under stress. These flaws in the implementation of personal budgets suggest that there are ways in which self-directed support could be made more accessible, less bureaucratic and more genuinely user-led. But this will not necessarily affect supply. For example, many older people purchase their own care home place or home care, but recent reports into both sectors have found widespread failings and high rates of poor care.

Recently, there is growing realisation in social care that personal budgets are most effective in reshaping provision when coupled with commissioning activity which helps current and potential providers to better understand how to provide more personalised services and to promote and support the development of start-ups and micro-enterprises. Small and niche providers often struggle to survive the transition from grant-funding to the ‘free market’ of personal budget funding. Start-ups face commissioning and regulatory challenges (Shared Lives Plus, 2011), whilst large, generic providers have resources to market their services and participate in complex framework-agreement commissioning processes. Matching the transformation of provision with gradual and uneven take up of personal budgets creates the challenge of running two kinds of provision, or battles over closures of ‘outdated’ building-based services still valued by users or commissioners (Department of Health, 2009). If they are to strengthen a council's market-shaping role, individuals need support to coordinate their purchasing, to build alliances with community organisations or to pool budgets. An evaluation of micro-enterprises supported by an organisation set up for that purpose, Community Catalysts, which has worked with around 600 of them, found that whilst the expected rate of failure for micro-enterprises is 90 per cent per annum, only 17 per cent of those micro-enterprises receiving specialist support failed over a three year period (Manchester Metropolitan University 2012).

Communities, relationships, social capital

Personalisation is, arguably, individualistic in its approach. This was appropriate in transforming the culture of a sector which often failed to recognise the individuality of people with long-term conditions. Recent critiques of personalisation (Fox, Reference Fox2012; Morris and Gilchrist, Reference Morris and Gilchrist2011; Princess Royal Trust for Carers, 2009; NAAPS et al., 2011) have emphasised its lack of focus upon relationships, community life and responsibilities.

The examples of collaborative uses of personal budgets alongside community resources outlined above point towards a version of personalisation described in the 2012 Care and Support white paper (Department of Health, 2012), which includes increased focus on the role of inclusive and involved communities and on building a diverse market of providers.

There is promising evidence of improved outcomes and savings from approaches combining personal choice and control with a focus on social productivity. For instance, Shared Lives, in which adults are matched with registered Shared Lives carers and their families, with participants sharing family and community life in relationships which can be lifelong, consistently outperformed other forms of regulated care (Care Quality Commission, 2010, 2011), realising significant savings (ASL, 2011) even for people who have previously been supported in much more expensive secure institutional care (Shared Lives Plus and KeyRing, 2012).

An asset-based or strength-based ethos

Some social care leaders argue that the greatest potential for reform, which results in people with support needs leading inclusive as well as independent lives and relying less upon state services, lies in the shift of focus underlying personalisation from being upon people's needs or deficits towards their strengths and assets, and the assets and resilience of their community. The limitations of reforms may be linked to the difficulties in making that shift within current service culture and societal norms.

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) is well developed in North America and elsewhere (McKnight, Reference McKnight1995). The term, ‘asset-based’, refers to approaches which look for people's gifts, skills and resources first, rather than their needs and vulnerability. Aligned with the social model of disability, an asset-based or strength-based approach rejects labelling people according to their health condition or patient group and refuses assumptions about people's potential to contribute or to develop expertise in their own lives. Asset-based thinking sees people's connectedness to their family and community as a crucial part of their ability to make and sustain changes in their lives. There is a strong fit between ‘asset-based’ and public health/self-management approaches that encourage people to feel more responsible for their own health or recovery.

An incomplete revolution

There are significant positive changes in social care but also gaps between the developing vision and reality, due a number of challenging cultural and regulatory barriers and the partial and patchy nature of the reform. Giving people control over resources does not ensure that they can become fully autonomous. Simply moving the location of services to community-settings without the commensurate community development work does not always result in genuine inclusion. Active citizenship is as much about what one can contribute and is seen to contribute as about what one receives. In applying lessons from social care's personalisation reforms to criminal justice, it is important to take note of its failures as well as its successes.

Desistance and the Good Lives Model

The increasing ‘standardisation’ of rehabilitation seems to contradict research and theory that suggests a more personalised approach to working with offenders is required. Of particular importance is the emerging literature on desistance. ‘Desistance’ is an increasingly influential concept within criminal justice practice. McNeill (Reference McNeill2006: 45) argues that: ‘The change process involved in the rehabilitation of offenders is desistance from offending’, and Ward and Maruna (Reference Ward and Maruna2007) citing earlier research (Blumstein and Cohen, Reference Blumstein and Cohen1987) note that around 85 per cent of repeat offenders desist from offending by age twenty-eight. They suggest that:

Desistance research explores the psychology of the offender. Maguire and Raynor (Reference Maguire and Raynor2006), when contrasting the desistance movement with more traditional approaches to offender resettlement, note that ‘Agency is as important – if not more important than – structure in promoting or inhibiting desistance’ (ibid.: 24). Thus an offender's future offending will be influenced by their thinking as well as their circumstances. Maruna (Reference Maruna2001) describes the importance of offenders’ internal ‘narratives’ in supporting either continued offending or desistance. In his research with ex-offenders, he found that individuals needed to establish an alternative, coherent and pro-social identity in order to justify and maintain their desistance from crime (Ward and Maruna, Reference Ward and Maruna2007).

Maguire and Raynor (Reference Maguire and Raynor2006: 24) note that, ‘Desistance is a difficult and often lengthy process, not an “event”, and reversals and relapses are common.’ Therefore:

The concept of desistance has implications for the practice of offender management. Often associated with the increased emphasis on desistance is the Good Lives Model of offender rehabilitation (Ward and Maruna, Reference Ward and Maruna2007). It builds on principles of positive psychology and is based on two therapeutic aims: to promote human goods and to reduce risk (Ward and Maruna, Reference Ward and Maruna2007; McNeill, Reference McNeill2009). Citing earlier work by Ward and his colleagues, Maruna and Ward argue that:

The implications for offender supervision are that:

Co-production will be key to this process, although negotiating meaningful co-production in the criminal justice system presents many challenges (Weaver, Reference Weaver2011).

McNeill and Weaver (Reference McNeill and Weaver2010: 6) note that a challenge with desistance research is that it is ‘not readily translated into straightforward prescriptions for practice’. However, they indicate this is not problematic, because developing a prescriptive model of practice would undermine personalisation. We argue that the challenge is actually bigger because not only is there uncertainty about the most appropriate ways to operationalise the desistance approach but, to date, proponents have given little attention to what commissioning arrangements might best suit such a personalised approach. Yet often, the ethos underpinning a commissioning model influences the types of interventions commissioned (Fox et al., Reference Fox, Albertson and Wong2013).

The experience of social care suggests that commissioning frameworks that facilitate personalised approaches to service delivery can be implemented. They might be suited to the criminal justice system to promote ‘mainstreaming’ of an approach based on desistance and the Good Lives Model.

Reforming supply as well as demand: payment by results

Our second key theme, in order to provide opportunities for a personalised approach to criminal justice, is marketisation. In 2010, the UK coalition government set out a new approach to commissioning criminal justice provision styled as a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ underpinned by market testing (HM Government, 2010). Government's desire, recently re-stated, in its review of probation services is to put specified probation services such as the supervision of lower and medium risk offenders and specified activities out to competition (Ministry of Justice, 2012b, 2013). Key to the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ is payment by results (PbR) which ‘will link payment to the outcomes achieved, rather than the inputs, outputs or processes of a service’ (Cabinet Office, 2011: 9). Proponents of PbR argue that it drives greater efficiency, innovation and impact in tackling social problems while also reducing risk for government (Fox and Albertson, Reference Fox and Albertson2011) by, for example, focusing reward on outcomes, and providing minimal prescription as to how these should be achieved. Proponents also argue ‘freeing’ up providers to deliver services in different ways encourages greater innovation. The PbR outcomes focus and the associated reduced focus on commissioners ‘micro-managing’ processes to achieve those, seems to be a rejection of the prevailing ‘New Public Management’ approach which has dominated the public sector and, increasingly, the voluntary sector services over recent years in the UK.

It could be argued that the concept of greater market-testing is broadly favourable to greater personalisation of services. Weaver argues that while personalisation purports to increase choice and control for service users:

Others would dispute this view of the underpinning values of personalisation, but plurality and marketisation are undoubtedly a facet of any system which gives individuals more purchasing choice. PbR mechanisms, which favour service transformation leading to more innovative and efficient services and provide opportunities for new market entrants (Fox and Albertson, Reference Fox and Albertson2011), could create conditions for more personalised services to be developed.

Within this broad framework of market-testing, there are different models of personalisation that the criminal justice sector might pursue. Economists and policy reformers in the neo-liberal tradition tend to place great emphasis on ‘choice’ leading to more efficient services and might be attracted by the concept of personal budgets. Leaving aside the difficulties of political presentation, giving an offender access to a personal budget should, if basic economic theory holds, allow the offender to find the most efficient means of leading their version of the ‘Good Life’. Further, a move away from ‘one size fits all’ offender programmes towards direct cash transfers should reduce system transaction costs. However, as discussed above, the experience of social care shows that introducing personal budgets has not always led to greater efficiency but instead to overly defensive and bureaucratic approaches to assessing need and calculating indicative personal budgets (Think Local, Act Personal, 2011). An asset-based approach should begin with a holistic discussion about the assets available to the individual in their own (potential) capabilities, in their families, networks and community.

If provision of ‘personal budgets’ for offenders is perceived as too politically risky, experience from social care shows that personalisation does not have to take such an individualistic direction. As Fox (Reference Fox2012) describes, some of the most exciting recent developments in personalisation in social care have been the move from entirely individual budget control, towards helping budget holders come together and act as a group, becoming commissioners with service-shaping power and in some cases co-designing and mutually owning small or micro-scale enterprises.

Communities, relationships and justice reinvestment

While desistance implies a close working relationship between supervisor and offender, one in which hope is fostered and nourishes a new, positive narrative (McNeill and Weaver, Reference McNeill and Weaver2010), desistance also has a social context and for Maguire and Raynor (Reference Maguire and Raynor2006: 25), ‘While overcoming social problems is often insufficient on its own to promote desistance, it may be a necessary condition for further progress.’ Solutions that draw on social and human capital will therefore need to be co-produced (McNeill and Weaver, Reference McNeill and Weaver2010). This is an important element of emerging desistance literature. McNeill and Weaver (Reference McNeill and Weaver2010) note that ongoing studies of desistance suggest the importance of links with parent and families in the desistance process and Weaver (Reference Weaver2011) is clear that the process of co-production should include offenders, victims and communities. Thus, whereas offending-related approaches concentrate on targeting offender deficits, desistance-focused approaches promote offender strengths or assets – for example, strong social bonds, pro-social involvements and social capital (Ward and Maruna, Reference Ward and Maruna2007; Farrall, Reference Farrall, Maruna and Immarigeon2004). As Maruna (Reference Maruna, McNeill, Raynor and Trotter2010: 81) argues, ‘Increasingly . . . the desistance paradigm understands rehabilitation as a relational process best achieved in the context of relationships with others.’

There is a clearly stated community dimension within the associated Good Lives Model of offender rehabilitation:

Maruna (Reference Maruna, McNeill, Raynor and Trotter2010) notes that some advocate devolving rehabilitation work from the state on to families and communities in a process akin to justice reinvestment. Maruna (Reference Maruna2006, Reference Maruna, McNeill, Raynor and Trotter2010) has gone as far as to argue that, by its very nature, reintegration should belong to communities and ex-prisoners, and that it has been ‘stolen’ away by the state. Whether or not one supports such a radical stance, the intersection between the desistance paradigm and justice reinvestment is clear.

Justice reinvestment is the third influential trend in current thinking about criminal justice policy that provides a possible framework for developing the concept of personsalisation in criminal justice. Justice reinvestment seeks to reduce the cost of crime in the most efficient way possible; at its base is consideration of criminal justice as a resource allocation problem. It proposes moving funds spent on punishment of offenders to programmes designed to tackle the underlying problems that gave rise to the criminal behaviour (Allen, Reference Allen2008). It is not a single strategy, project or intervention. It is a multi-stage process providing a framework for local agencies to work together to identify and reduce the drivers of criminal justice costs (La Vigne et al., Reference La Vigne, Neusteter, Lachman, Dwyer and Nadeau2010).

Tucker and Cadora (Reference Tucker and Cadora2003) propose a radical re-imagining of the aims and scope of the criminal justice system locating the delivery of criminal justice within a wider set of social policies focused on communities which generate a high proportion of prisoners. This model of Justice Reinvestment is inextricably linked to the delivery of social justice, although over time a narrower, more managerialist version has emerged (Fox et al., Reference Fox, Albertson and Wong2013). Nevertheless, sticking with the original and more radical model, Justice Reinvestment can be helpful in establishing the broader framework within which to develop local personalisation. It is based on localism and the idea that criminal justice policy needs to be tailored to local areas with a greater role for communities in responding to crime and offending:

It also implies a mixed economy of provision with a role for the state, the private and the not-for-profit sectors. Thus:

Tucker and Cadora (Reference Tucker and Cadora2003: 5, emphasis added) call for ‘public reinvestment in individual capacity and community institutions’. The social care experience suggests that moving towards self-managed and community-based support will place new demands upon families and friends, whose support and involvement is vital in any transformation process. However, it also provides two important opportunities. First, interventions in community settings must be co-produced with those communities in order to increase inclusion, and if done well this has the potential to harness latent social capital. Policy initiatives such as the Big Society have made claims about the potential for communities to contribute more, without necessarily being able to articulate an evidence-based approach to generating social capital. However, there is an established manual and evidence base for ‘asset-based community development’ (ABCD), such as the resources gathered by Northwestern University's ABCD InstituteFootnote ³ or many evaluations of Local Area Coordination, an ABCD approach used for twenty-five years in Australia (Broad, Reference Broad2012).

A second potential opportunity is one where rehabilitation provides new economic opportunities for local people and communities. Thus, in social care, some communities (often incorporating service users) have established social enterprises that deliver services to older people as alternatives to traditional care. We see examples such as Neighbourhood Networks in Leeds bringing together personal budget allocations of local willing participants, in order to find more effective – and hopefully cheaper – ways of meeting those individuals’ needs, with greater use of volunteers and other community resources (Fox, Reference Fox2012). Following the social care experience, we might envisage situations where willing offenders with appropriate support could construct micro-scale initiatives which could provide a route for employment and/or voluntary action, without the barriers to employment caused by the stigma attached to a history of offending.

A strategy to promote social innovation in criminal justice

One lesson for any sector considering introducing a more ‘assets-based’ and co-productive approach to support is that giving individuals control of money makes little impact upon choice without intensive work to develop a market of small and large providers. It is clear that widening choice requires an equal focus upon demand and supply. Key to this will be to widen the supplier base and create a genuinely mixed economy in which the advantages of public, private and not-for-profit organisations can all play a part. The current government recognises this. In its Green Paper on criminal justice reform, the Coalition Government sets out an agenda designed to challenge: ‘A “Whitehall knows best” approach [which] has stifled innovation both at national and local level’ (Ministry of Justice, 2010: 6). The recent announcement outlining plans to complete a wide range of Probation Services (Ministry of Justice, 2012b) is a clear signal of how it intends to address this. A key element to the new approach could be decentralisation. Thus, the Ministry of Justice has argued recently for:

On paper, this approach fits well with the personalisation approach. However, there is a risk that new market entrants, whether drawn from the private or not-for-profit sectors, will tend to be large, commercially driven organisations. In part, this is the result of the payment by results model that has been implemented. Only large organisations with substantial capital reserves or access to substantial flows of credit can take on the risk of payments linked to reductions in twelve month re-offending rates that will take substantially longer than twelve months to verify (Fox and Albertson, Reference Fox and Albertson2011). However, the intention of using a national commissioning model for rehabilitation services divided into sixteen geographic contract areas (Ministry of Justice, 2013) might further hamper social innovation. At the very least it places the responsibility for social innovation very much in the hands of the big, private sector ‘primes’ who are likely to win the bulk of contracts.

What is required is a strategy that goes much further towards creating the conditions for genuine social innovation. A criminal justice strategy for social innovation would combine a mixture of top-down strategies that facilitate greater social innovation with scope for local, bottom-up development. In social care, top-down stimulus has involved reviewing regulatory and legislative barriers that hamper micro-enterprises and discouraging exclusive use of commissioning approaches such as ‘Preferred Provider’ lists which are inimical to innovative organisations, micro-enterprises and start-ups. Bottom-up development might be encouraged by making closer links between, for example, programmes addressing education, training and employment for offenders, their families who will often have complex needs and the communities they live in which will often experience economic marginalisation. The Justice Reinvestment model provides a useful framework for bringing these elements together. One funding mechanism that might provide a means of delivering the breadth of services required is Community Budgets. Currently being piloted in sixteen areas, Community Budgets pool budgets for local public service partnerships, enabling redesign and integration of frontline services across organisations. In Control, a pioneer of personal budgets, has developed a Community Fund Holding model (Waters, Reference Waters2011) which allows funding allocated to meet particular groups’ needs (such as a group of local older people or people with learning disabilities) to be transferred to the control of that group and their community.

Culture and politics

Transforming culture in the criminal justice system is the most significant challenge. Experience in social care suggests it will be necessary to design a whole-system transformation in which the introduction of positively disruptive approaches such as personal budgets, co-production, community budgeting and micro-scale interventions are coordinated, with the focus remaining upon outcomes rather than process. This involves the managed transfer of power from professionals to end users and requires trust to be built in users’ abilities to manage those resources effectively. Compared to social care, the criminal justice system presents additional challenges in terms of the need to manage risk, to punish as well as reform and to address the stigma that many offenders carry with them. However, there are examples within criminal justice of such changes taking place.

Within the social innovation literature, an example often cited is the Restorative Justice movement (for example Mulgan et al., Reference Mulgan, Tucker, Ali and Sanders2007). This has moved from the periphery of the criminal justice system in the UK to take on a much more prominent role and feature in many aspects of mainstream service provision. Interestingly, Restorative Justice is a co-produced approach to delivering justice (Weaver, Reference Weaver2011) and relies upon a degree of personalisation. Perhaps this example provides hope for the development of personalised criminal justice services and shows how social innovation can help to deliver it. The Justice Reinvestment movement, particularly in the USA, also provides a hopeful example. In the USA, a defining feature of successful Justice Reinvestment projects has been their bipartisan nature (Fox et al., Reference Fox, Albertson and Wong2013). To some extent, this might be aided by the fact that Justice Reinvestment, perhaps in part because of its economic underpinnings, transcends traditional political demarcations. So, as Skolnick (Reference Skolnick2012) points out, it is noticeable that in the USA such initiatives are ‘all very warm and fuzzy, yet such policies have been championed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’ (Skolnick, Reference Skolnick2012: unnumbered).

What might the public make of a more personalised approach? The success of Restorative Justice suggests that community engagement in progressive criminal justice initiatives can be positive. Such community-based approaches would not necessarily preclude particular groups of offenders from participation in personalisation. The Circles of Support programmeFootnote ⁴ developed in Canada where a group of volunteers forms into a community around a sex offender seems to be a sustainable model.