Breaking the Cycle
Proposed reforms
of the criminal
justice system
Background
• Cost of re-offending is £7-10bn
• 50% offenders released from prison
reoffend within a year
• Reoffending rates for short prison
sentences of less than 12 months
increased from 58% to 61% in 2008
Offender needs
• 37% of prisoners have stated that they will need help
finding a place to live when they are released from
prison;
• 12% said they had a mental illness or depression as a
long-standing illness, while 20% reported needing
help with an emotional or mental health problem;
• 24% said they had been taken into care as a child;
• almost half (47%) said they had no qualifications; and
• 13% said that they have never had a paid job.
Green Paper Proposals
• Punishment and payback
• Rehabilitating offenders to reduce crime
• Payment by results
• Sentencing reform
• Youth justice
• Working with communities to reduce
crime
Punishment and Payback
• Prisons becoming places of hard work and
industry
• Community sentences punishing offenders
and making them pay back to society and the
taxpayer
• Offenders making greater financial reparation
to victims and the taxpayer
• Victims engaging with criminal justice on their
terms
Rehabilitating offenders to reduce
crime
• Encouraging Integrated Offender Management (IOM)
to help equip local partners to work successfully
together in the payment by results and financial
incentives model
• Removing barriers and encouraging more joint
working, local innovation and sharing of good practice
• Supporting areas in considering new and innovative
ways in which the voluntary and community sector
can be equal partners in the delivery of Integrated
Offender Management
Payment by results
• establishing at least six payment-by-results projects
covering a significant proportion of the offender
population;
• reducing direct control so that frontline professionals
have the freedom to innovate in the way they work
with offenders; and
• publishing a comprehensive competition strategy for
prisons and probation to open up the market to new
providers from the private, voluntary and community
sectors in June 2011.
Youth Justice
• preventing more young people from offending and
divert them from entering into a life of crime
• ensure that more is done to make young offenders
pay back to their victims and communities;
• ensuring the effective use of sentencing for young
offenders;
• incentivising local partners to reduce youth offending
and re-offending using payment by results models
• abolishing the Youth Justice Board and increasing
freedoms and flexibilities for local areas.
Working with communities to reduce
crime
• opening up public services to new and
independent providers
• increasing social action
• empowering citizens and communities
to hold local agencies to account and
share responsibility for making their
neighbourhoods safer.