For those of us who have spent years promoting the policy of Justice
Reinvestment (JR), today’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between
the Ministry of Justice, London Councils and the Mayor is an important moment. It
remains to be seen of course whether it leads, as David Gauke told Parliament,
to fundamental change in responsibilities for criminal justice and offender
management in London. But it certainly promises greater local influence in the capital’s
victim and witness services, probation system, electronic monitoring arrangements
and justice measures for young adults and women. It goes some way towards meeting one of the three key elements of JR- that is the “devolution of responsibility
for criminal justice to a more local level, where a range of relevant
organisations can devise the most appropriate approaches to reducing crime,
incorporating the views of people most affected by it”.
But what about the other two prerequisites for JR? These are
first, an overarching and explicit policy goal of reducing the numbers of
people being prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned; and second a method of
financing criminal justice institutions and processes which incentivises the
transfer of resources away from prison places, and into community based
measures for rehabilitating offenders and preventing crime. The MoU takes us less far and more tentatively in
these directions.
It’s true that it commits to exploring the scope for greater
use of police diversion and credible alternatives to custody for women; and to reducing
the numbers of young Londoners from being incarcerated in unsafe or distant institutions.
But alongside these lukewarm diversionary ambitions sit proposals for a community
prison for women and a secure school for children. The MOU talks about reviewing
“the use of custody (both police and secure estate) for young people to develop
recommendations to support more effective custodial solutions”. I thought this
must be a typo (with a missing non-), but am not so sure.
More positively perhaps, the parties commit to working to
explore the feasibility and practicality of justice reinvestment “with the aim
of reducing the number of low risk offenders sentenced to custody and enabling
the sharing of savings to support better community interventions. This will
include a particular focus on female offenders and 18-25 year old offenders”.
The document’s glossary defines JR as “a model where
investment is given to a local area in response to a reduction in demand on the
offender management / criminal justice system”. It acknowledges the possibility of upfront
funding with the ability to claw back payments if demand is not reduced. The MoU incorrectly
states that this has not been tested. The Youth Justice Reinvestment Custody Pathfinder which ran from 2011-2013 did just that. While two of the four pilot sites
activated a break clause after a year, the two that stayed the course exceeded
their targets for reducing the custodial places required for their young
people. It worked.
How far this all goes and when will depend on the energy and vision
of the London Justice Devolution Board which will drive the agenda forward. The
timetable for action is a bit opaque. The first task of the Board “will be to
agree a detailed implementation plan to operationalise all of the commitments
in this MoU no later than March 2019. The implementation plan will be developed
prior to the first London Justice Devolution Board”.
Back in 2015 I recommended that a JR initiative on women “combining up front money and reward payments should be started”. Rather than yet more time exploring, considering and scoping, the partners should crack on with this at the very least.
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