Payment-by-results cuts demand on youth justice services
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Incentive payment programmes being trialled in youth justice have reduced demand on offender services in their first year of operation, new figures show.
Results for year one of the five Local Justice Reinvestment pilots using payment-by-results in youth justice settings show an overall drop of 13 per cent in offending-related work between July 2011 and June 2012.
However, individual results for the pilots varied widely, with Southwark, Lewisham and Greater Manchester delivering cuts of 20 per cent or more, while Lambeth and Croydon reported a rise of 13.4 and 6.7 per cent respectively compared to 2010 levels.
Under the pilots, agencies involved in delivering youth justice services receive "success payments" if demand on the youth justice system drops by 10 per cent, up to a maximum of 20 per cent.
Success is measured by assessing the demand that young offenders place on youth offending teams (YOTs), the court system, prisons and probation. Pilots are left to devise their own ways of cutting demand, with much of the work focused on early intervention and crime prevention.
Payments in youth services – the pilots also cover adult offending – include £540 for cutting custody convictions and court orders, £650 for reducing the number of sentences given longer than two years and £480 for reducing "other" convictions.
The drop in demand in the youth offender system was significantly more than in adult services, however figures for success payments have not been separated out. Overall across the programme, which includes a sixth pilot in Hackney that only covers adult offending, £3.6m was paid out to justice agencies. Where demand doesn’t fall, no payment is made.
An independent evaluation of the pilots by Sheffield Hallam University published this week, found that in Greater Manchester, while the reinvestment programme hadn't driven changes in the youth justice system, YOTs staff reported that it had provided an opportunity to "look at how can we work more effectively, create efficiencies through thinking more creatively and particularly around collaboration across the region".
Agencies taking part in pilots include YOTs, the National Offender Management Service, local authorities, prisons and voluntary organisations. Pilots started in July 2011 and are funded for two years.
