Who shot JR? Whatever happened to Justice Reinvestment?

Justice Reinvestment (JR) is an approach to penal policy which contains several important components of a better criminal justice system. At its core is the idea that much of the money spent on justice is used ineffectively and produces a poor return.  People in prison are largely drawn from neighbourhoods characterised by poverty, deprivation and social problems. If some criminal justice funding were spent not on processing individuals in these areas by “cops , courts and corrections” but instead on providing better services and facilities, better outcomes would result for the individuals and the communities where they live.

In January 2010, the Parliamentary Justice Select Committee produced the report ‚Cutting Crime: Making the Case for Justice Reinvestment which called for a radical rethink of the way criminal justice money is spent. It recommended reducing prison numbers by a third and the movement of resources towards spending on prevention in targeted communities. The report encouraged local agencies to play a much more active part in preventing and responding to crime.

The Coalition government took up the slogan at least, describing their rehabilitation revolution as making “the concept of justice reinvestment real by allowing providers to invest money in the activity that will prevent offending rather than spending money on dealing with the consequences.”

But JR is much more than a financing mechanism. It is about reducing the use of imprisonment and encouraging local responsibility for organising and resourcing the alternatives, as well as a focus on effective use of resources. Reductions in prison numbers and a localist approach (to probation at any rate) appear to have disappeared from the government’s agenda.

To be fair, pilot schemes to incentivise local statutory partners to reduce demand for adult  prison places and to provide councils with cash to divert under 18’s from custody are producing some technical lessons about what needs to be done. But with disinvestment the overall order of the day, stakeholders in the adult pilots complain of insufficient incentives   to make substantial changes to practice that were not already in train; on the juvenile side two of the four schemes have withdrawn from the pilot.

What’s needed alongside emerging technical models is a renewed political level commitment to JR. It's unlikely to come from a Government which wants to make the system not smaller but simply cheaper - but who nevertheless found £250 million to fund a Titan prison in North Wales as part of investing in Britain’s future.  

But if the Labour party needs a big but affordable idea for criminal justice, JR may be it.