The attached report “The
Economic Case for and Against Prison” was
commissioned from Matrix Knowledge Group by the Monument
Trust, the LankellyChase Foundation and the Bromley
Trust.
We asked Matrix to look at
the effectiveness of prison as:
-
bare custody
-
prison with
additional interventions (e.g. drug treatment, sex
offender programmes, behavioural programmes,
education etc)
-
community
sentences
-
community
sentences with interventions
The chosen measure was the
impact of these different approaches on re-offending.
The Report compares the cost of the community sentences
versus prison sentences. The savings to the public
purse range from £30K to £88K per offender. When costs
to victims are taken into account (and this is one of
very few reports that look at these costs), the savings
range from £61K to £202K per offender. No alternative
intervention/sentence was shown to be less effective
than prison. Even where there is little difference
between a prison or a community payback sentence in
terms of cutting re-offending the conclusion is that it
is still more cost-effective to use a community sentence.
Although previous, piecemeal, research has been carried
out, the budget for prisons has risen to almost £2
billion without any reliable or consistently readable
evidence that it is effective. The re-offending rate
indicates that it is not. Indeed a school or hospital
performing so poorly would be put into special measures,
or closed. The findings of this Report show that a very
large proportion of the prison population is undergoing
a regime that is less effective at reducing re-offending
than comparable community punishment sentences with the
right interventions.
No alternative
intervention/sentence was shown to be less effective
than a bare custodial sentence and it is clear that
reducing the number of prisoners held would release a
good deal of the £2million prison budget for investment
in and development of effective measures within the
community.
The technical appendix
which describes the methodology behind the report is
available at
http://www.matrixknowledge.co.uk/prison-economics/
