Economic ideas and concepts have always influenced thinking about crime and criminal justice. Increasingly, however, criminologists, policy-makers and practitioners who draw on, or seek to critique, economic ideas take a rather narrow view of economics based on the prevailing orthodoxy: neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism, vulgarly conceived, assumes society is comprised of self-serving, instrumentally rational actors.

In this briefing we highlight the importance of social innovation in the criminal justice system and ask whether reforms to the criminal justice system taking place as part of the Transforming Rehabilitation policy shift will encourage or deter social innovation in the future.

The criminal justice sector has never achieved rates of re-offending with which the public and policy makers are satisfied.

In the UK, national and local governments are struggling to cope with the economic crisis which ensued in 2008.

The ‘London Reducing Reoffending Programme’ (LRRP) was an innovative Payment by Results (PbR) programme that aimed to reduce youth reoffending in London.