The Whole System Approach (WSA) to women offenders across Greater Manchester aims to embed gender-responsive support for women at three points of the criminal justice system – arrest, sentencing and upon release from prison. The governance and funding of the WSA is overseen by the Justice and Rehabilitation Executive (JRE). Nine women’s centres across the Greater Manchester provide the support ‘hubs’ for women referred via these different routes.

What is the need?

The WSA accords with other models that use women-centred environments to improve outcomes for female offenders and divert those at risk from offending. The application within the Greater Manchester model of women centred interventions at every point in the criminal justice process provides a rich opportunity for testing the evidence.

What are we doing?

A process, impact and economic evaluation.  The process evaluation will examine how the WSA has been developed and implemented across the nine women’s centres, interviewing project staff, beneficiaries and partner agencies and analysing management information collected by the services. The impact evaluation will comprise a reconviction study using Police National Computer (PNC) data and analysis of outcomes data collected by the women’s centres.  The economic evaluation will assess the costs and benefits of the WSA.

What will be the outcomes?

This evaluation will build on the evidence base around working with women offenders and discover how services can be fully integrated across the whole criminal justice pathway from arrest to sentence and custody discharge. The learning will provide a foundation from which this model can be refined with the potential for wider roll-out across other parts of the UK.

What are the timescales?

The impact evaluation, economic evaluation and final report will be completed by the end of 2017.