The development and Year One Implementation of the Local Justice Reinvestment Pilot
Testing of the extent to which local partners can be incentivised to work together more effectively to tackle crime & reduce reoffending.
Documents
Details
The Local Justice Reinvestment (LJR) Pilot is testing the extent to which local partners in six pilot sites can be incentivised to work together more effectively to tackle crime and reduce reoffending. These partners receive a financial reward if they reduce adult demand on criminal justice services by 5% or more and youth demand by 10% or more in each of the two test years (July 2011 – June 2012, July 2012 – June 2013) measured against the baseline period (July 2010 – June 2011). The pilot sites are Greater Manchester and the London boroughs of Croydon, Hackney, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark; covering adult and youth criminal justice systems in all sites except Hackney. This report focuses on the initial findings from a process evaluation of the LJR pilot (commissioned by the MoJ) and examines the early development and implementation of the pilot in the first test year. The methodology was primarily qualitative and included: interviews with strategic and operational managers; interviews and focus groups with front line staff; workshops to map partnership and criminal justice system (CJS) changes and a focus on exemplar interventions at three sites.
What actions did local partners take?
The sites responded to LJR in different ways and to varying degrees, with evidence of a greater response in Greater Manchester compared to some London sites in terms of investing in new approaches to managing offenders.
In Greater Manchester these changes involved criminal justice system redesign, based on a portfolio of interventions and processes focused at the point of arrest, sentence and release from prison. In London LJR was perceived to have driven the introduction of new interventions in some sites while in others there was less evidence of this and a greater reliance on using existing interventions and processes (principally Integrated Offender Management) as a vehicle for delivering LJR.
There is evidence that LJR enhanced partnership working, spurred the development of new commissioning and service delivery models (Greater Manchester, Lewisham and Croydon) and provided some focus for reviewing approaches to reducing reoffending in the other sites..