Redesigning justice: Reducing crime through justice reinvestment
Article
The report argues for a national policy in which offenders currently sentenced to six months or less (for crimes excluding robbery, violent or sexual crimes) are not sent to prison, but serve tough community sentences instead. To facilitate justice reinvestment, it recommends that local authorities should be given much greater responsibility for the management of low-level offenders and incentivised to keep them out of prison, but also out of trouble.
Developed on a case study conducted in the London borough of Lewisham, the report sets out the scale of the costs of imprisoning the local offender population and identifies the kind of budget that could be made available to a local area. It identifies, in practical terms, what such a local budget could be spent on and how it could be integrated with existing services on the ground, and outlines how, in practice, money could be made to flow around the system in order to make justice reinvestment work.
Note: second edition published in December 2011 - includes new appendix B 'Redesigning justice: local innovations'
Related items
Who gets a good deal? Revealing public attitudes to transport in Great Britain
Transport isn’t working. That’s the message from the British public. This is especially true if you’re on a low income, disabled or living in the countryside. The cost of living crisis has exposed the shortcomings of our transport system,…Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan on TalkTV discussing AI
IPPR's Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan on TalkTV discussing his new report on the impact of generative AI on the UK labour market.Transformed by AI: How generative artificial intelligence could affect work in the UK – and how to manage it
Technological change is a good thing. It has brought exponential gains to living standards and is the foundation of modern society. Yet unmanaged technological change has always come with risks and disruptions.