Nathan Monk

The development of Integrated Offender Management (IOM) approaches have spread rapidly across England and Wales since 2009 when IOM was acknowledged by Government through the Home Office policy statement. The MoJ commissioned process evaluation of the five IOM pioneer sites (Senior et al 2011) found that assessing the impact and benefits of IOM was difficult given the definitional issues of IOM and problems in identifying additionality. To date, this remains a challenge for local agencies, despite attempts to facilitate this, such as the IOM efficiency toolkit (Home Office and MoJ 2011).
This paper will examine the challenges and limitations of the methodologies employed and will identify what lessons can be learned for evaluating other criminal justice initiatives such as Payment by Results schemes where definitions of interventions and additionality may be difficult to determine.

The Minister for Justice has outlined his aspiration for the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector to be involved in the supply chain for the services offered in the Transforming Rehabilitation programme and as a result the sector will enter into commercial contracts with Tier 1 providers. Involvement in commercial contracts will raise many questions for the voluntary sector and may involve risks on a number of levels. These include the financial risk of having to deal with contracts in a commercial environment, where payment may include a Payment by Results element, the outcome of which could be a shortfall in payment if targets are not met. There are also issues relating to how moving into the commercial sector and working with ‘for-profits’ companies could impact on the values and status of ‘not for profit’ organisations. Organisations can take steps to help mitigate some of the risk and the Ministry of Justice is proposing a number of safeguards to help smaller organisations, but how reliable these will be requires examination. By examining other Payment by Results schemes with particular reference to the Work programme, the impact on the voluntary sector can be shown.

This paper forms part of a research project that started in 2012 and aimed at reviewing and identifying existing practices within probation that should be highlighted and maintained. The review focuses on the black and minority ethnic (BME) population of probation users. The nexus of our investigation was the London Probation Trust (LPT) and our primary research question was whether race equality can drive quality in the probation service. If the current reforms are all about competition and quality outcomes, then where does race equality sit?

We know that most women in the Criminal Justice System have a range of essential
support needs. They have experienced, or are currently experiencing traumatic events,
are living through abusive relationships, self-medicating and coping through drug misuse
and have a lack of social support. In addition to difficulties with managing and providing
for their dependent children, they have been described as presenting “particular
challenges” in the recent Justice Select Committee Report (MoJ, 2013). The real challenge
is to accept that success is a complex and layered process, especially within the context of
chronic stress and trauma. Measures of offending and other quantitative target measures
are simply not sufficient to account for positive change and the level of support
required. The impact of good quality service provision on women with complex and
diverse needs must be considered within a more sophisticated framework and
commissioners from Prime providers and the MoJ should be held accountable for ensuring
this.

The probation service is about to undergo major changes in its structure as the Government drives through its proposals outlined in Transforming Rehabilitation. The question is whether this will be an improvement in how offenders are supervised and supported? In addition what will be the impact on the protection of the public? This paper outlines a number of concerns that are already affecting probation staff including the issue of risk.