Justice Data Lab statistics: December 2013
The report is released by the Ministry of Justice and produced in accordance with arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.
Applies to England and Wales
Documents
Details
Introduction
The Justice Data Lab has been launched as a pilot for one year from April 2013. During this year, a small team from Analytical Services within the Ministry of Justice will support organisations that provide offender services by allowing them easy access to aggregate re-offending data, specific to the group of people they have worked with. This will support organisations in understanding their effectiveness at reducing re-offending.
The service model involves organisations sending the Justice Data Lab team details of the offenders they have worked with along with information about the specific intervention they have delivered. The Data Lab team then matches these offenders to MoJ’s central datasets and returns the re-offending rate of this particular cohort, alongside that of a control group of offenders with very similar characteristics in order to better identify the impact of the organisation’s work.
There are two publication types:
-
A summary of the findings of the Justice Data Lab pilot to date (2 April to 30 November 2013).
-
Tailored reports about the re-offending outcomes of services or interventions delivered by each of the organisations who have requested information through the Justice Data Lab pilot. Each report is an Official Statistic and will show the results of the re-offending analysis for the particular service or intervention delivered by the organisation who delivered it.
Main findings to date
To date, the Justice Data Lab has received 65 requests for re-offending information and has produced 30 reports, 23 of which were published last month. A further 6 are now complete and ready for publication, bringing the total of completed reports to 36. To date, there have been 11 requests that could not be processed as the minimum criteria for analyses through the Data Lab had not been met. The remaining requests are currently in progress and will be published in future monthly releases of these statistics.
Of the 6 reports being published this month:
Two reports are National analyses of the NOMS Co-Financing Organisation (NOMS CFO) project – following the regional analyses that were published last month. This programme helps offenders access mainstream services with the aim of gaining skills and moving them into employment. The initiative is funded in partnership with the European Social Fund and is delivered regionally through a number of different suppliers; these include a number of probation trusts and private companies such as Serco, A4E, and Pertemps People Development Group. There are two reports presented where the programme was started by individuals in 2010; one report covers individuals starting the programme in custody, and the second report covers those who started the programme in the community.
- The programmes which started in the community led to a reduction in the one year proven re-offending rate of between 4 and 8 percentage points.
- There were inconclusive findings for the programmes which started in custody.
For more information about the NOMS CFO project, please see the following information
There were four additional inconclusive results which looked at programmes delivered by A4e, HMP Downview, Foundation and Prince’s Trust. Reasons for an inconclusive result include; the sample of individuals provided by the organisation was too small to detect a statistically significant change in behaviour; or that the service or programme genuinely does not affect re-offending behaviour. However, it is very difficult to differentiate between these reasons in the analysis, so the organisations are recommended to submit larger samples of data when it becomes available. Detailed discussion of results and interpretation is available in the individual reports.
The bulletin is produced and handled by the Ministry’s analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons: Ministry of Justice Secretary of State, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Permanent Secretary, Policy Advisers for reducing re-offending, Policy Advisors for the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme, and relevant Press Officers and Special Advisers.