Audit Committee, 08 Feb 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 8, 2005

Official Report 199KB pdf

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Scottish Prison Service

Item 3 is a briefing from Arwel Roberts on the Auditor General for Scotland's report "Scottish Prison Service: Correctional opportunities for prisoners".

The report examines the Scottish Prison Service's provision of correctional opportunities for prisoners to reduce the risk of reoffending by improving prisoners' skills, addressing their offending behaviour, tackling addictions and preparing prisoners for release. Correctional opportunities include education, work-related training and behaviour management programmes.

We carried out the study for a number of reasons. First, reoffending is a major problem for the Scottish criminal justice system. SPS research indicates that nearly half of all prisoners who were released in 1999 were back in prison within two years. In addition, costs of reoffending are likely to be high. For example, it is estimated that recorded crime by ex-prisoners in England and Wales costs at least £11 billion per year. Secondly, the cost of operating the prison service in 2003-04 was around £260 million, of which the SPS estimates that it spent around £30 million—some 12 per cent of the full cost of prison operations—on correctional opportunities. Thirdly, research evidence from outside Scotland indicates that the provision of opportunities and interventions for prisoners during their sentences can be effective in improving basic skills and reducing reoffending.

The overall message that emerges from the report is that the Scottish Prison Service needs to do more to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of the opportunities that it provides in reducing the risk of reoffending. The report's findings indicate that although the SPS has no statutory duties to rehabilitate prisoners, the service recognises the importance of doing so and has increased the provision of education, vocational training and behaviour management programmes. However, a number of weaknesses are apparent, which prevent a clear conclusion on the extent to which expenditure has provided value for money. In particular, the Scottish Executive has an objective to reduce reoffending, but it has not set a specific objective or target that makes it clear how it expects the SPS to use its resources to contribute to the overall objective.

Prisoners' access to appropriate opportunities is variable and often depends on the resources that are available at each prison and on the duration of a prisoner's sentence. The report shows that a lack of staff and facilities at a number of prisons resulted in waiting lists for access to correctional opportunities. The SPS has limited cost information for the correctional opportunities that it provides, which inhibits assessment of value for money. Due to the absence of robust local information on costs and activity, a full benchmarking exercise for all correctional opportunities across all prisons could not be carried out.

The SPS has undertaken only limited evaluation of the success of its correctional opportunities and has yet to evaluate the effectiveness of its correctional work in reducing reoffending. The evaluation of offending behaviour programmes should provide a robust basis for evaluating other correctional opportunities, but there are no specific plans or timescales for the development of such evaluations.

The SPS needs to improve the way in which it works with external organisations that are involved in the rehabilitation of offenders, to promote the effectiveness of the opportunities that are provided in custody. Scotland's criminal justice plan, which was published in December 2004, includes proposals for closer working links between the SPS and community-based criminal justice services.

Finally, I will comment on a number of positive steps that the SPS is taking to address some of the issues that I have mentioned. In 2004, it introduced a range of initiatives that were designed to improve the provision of correctional opportunities for prisoners in the prisons that it manages. Those initiatives include performance contracts for each prison to improve business planning and measurement of performance, including performance on correctional work; a so-called menu-based approach that is designed to provide prisoners with appropriate opportunities, depending on the length of their sentences; and a new information technology system to improve information sharing within the SPS and between prisons and outside agencies. The SPS accepts the need for improvement and has recognised the need to evaluate better the impact of its correctional work in order to demonstrate value for money.

As always, we are happy to answer any questions that the committee may have.

Just before I invite members to ask questions, I draw to their attention—or remind them of—the fact that the Justice 1 Committee is considering the Audit Scotland report as part of its inquiry into the effectiveness of rehabilitation programmes in prison. It is also relevant to note that the Executive has announced plans to legislate on prisoner reoffending early this year—we believe that the bill is imminent. I give that as background information.

As I am a member of both the Audit Committee and the Justice 1 Committee, I am becoming a little confused about which committee's meeting I am at. However, I will try to keep to audit issues. I do not want to give away what the Justice 1 Committee is considering as it draws up its report, but I agree that we have found it difficult to examine the inconsistencies across the prison service and have noticed a lack of evidence to support any of the arguments about what works. I was struck by the fact that prisoners move around the system and might not serve their whole sentence in one establishment, to which Arwel Roberts referred. From an audit point of view, I want to know whether the facilities are available to follow prisoner journeys so that we can decide whether the work that has been done with them has been productive. Is that another difficulty that you had?

It fair to say that we had that difficulty. The case material on individual prisoners does not always enable their whole sentencing treatment to be evaluated.

Do you have any suggestions on how we could follow that path?

As I have said, the SPS has introduced a new IT system. In theory, that should help.

The report is a baseline report that states what you found and where we are. It makes it clear that the reoffending agenda is just beginning to be implemented throughout the Scottish Prison Service. You mentioned that a new computer system is being introduced, but is the SPS taking the necessary steps to provide robust baseline information so that we can move on to conduct proper value-for-money evaluations and assessments of what is being done in each prison? As regards the ability to audit those objectives, is the SPS heading in the right direction?

On the basis of what we have seen, the SPS recognises that it is necessary to provide more information. I would not necessarily want to comment on its robustness yet.

Does the information that is supplied by the commercial contract for the running of Kilmarnock prison—which is operated privately—enable you to determine what is happening there? Does it include robust targets against which performance can be measured?

As the one private finance initiative prison in the system, Kilmarnock has specific service delivery agreements as part of its contract. That principle has been rolled out across the other prisons in the system, which seek to match the same business objectives.

I note that, in the report, reference is made to the fact that

"Statute and ministerial objectives do not set clear goals for the delivery of correctional opportunities".

The report goes on to note:

"There is no statutory duty to undertake rehabilitation".

I read those comments as implying that, from an audit point of view, you thought that that state of affairs was a weakness in some way. However, it is striking that, despite the absence of a statutory duty, the SPS has given correctional work such a high priority. Perhaps we are making a tenuous or even spurious connection and further statutory controls are not necessary to drive change because the service seems to be moving forward on correctional work by its own hand.

In the same section of the report, you flag up the fact that the

"SPS has no defined budget for correctional opportunities".

Again, the implication seems to be that, if it had such a defined budget, it would do more. However, it seems to me that, because it has freedom and flexibility on correctional work, the SPS is being relatively creative, which is not to suggest that there is not a long way to go.

The first part of the question might delve into policy, so it is for the Audit Scotland representatives to decide whether they wish to answer that.

What underlies the point that we were making is the need to provide a means to ensure that the Scottish Prison Service's performance can be properly measured and assessed. It is true that the sponsor department does not set specific objectives for correctional activities, which are not a statutory duty of the Scottish Prison Service. The SPS's primary statutory duty is custody and it is to its credit that it has taken the opportunity that custody provides to introduce measures for rehabilitation. It spends a considerable proportion of its funds on correctional activities and we think that it is important that that spending can be assessed for performance and value for money and that it is important for the sponsor department, rather than the Scottish Prison Service, to set the objectives.

I have two other points to query, one of which is about research. Various references are made in the report to research or to gaps in research on the efficacy of correctional programmes. I appreciate that that must be the substance of much of what the Justice 1 Committee is considering, but I am interested in the issue. In paragraph 1.7, you flag up the point that certain research has been conducted in England and Wales but comparable research has not been done in Scotland. Are you leaning towards the suggestion that more research should be done in Scotland or should we make better use of the research that has been done elsewhere, whether south of the border or beyond our shores? I doubt whether the evidence on what works would vary hugely from one part of the United Kingdom to another and possibly even from the UK to abroad.

There are a number of issues. First, reoffending needs to be defined. It is difficult to measure reoffending if it is not detected, and what the research really measures is the extent to which prisoners return to prison as a result of reoffending. Therefore, wherever the measurement is made, it is not a true measurement of reoffending; it is a measurement of resentencing.

On where the research comes from, the Scottish Prison Service is a member of an international group of prison organisations that shares information about such issues and is actively involved in gathering research in other parts of the UK and outside the UK. Certain countries have strong research, and the Scottish Prison Service benefits from that research as much as it can.

So this section of the report should not be read as Audit Scotland pressing for the Scottish Prison Service and the Scottish Executive to undertake their own research into such matters. Instead, are you saying that they should ensure that they have the information and evidence base that are required for them to make informed decisions?

Yes.

On page 7 of the report, you make a connection between correctional work and the condition of the prison estate. I thought that you tantalisingly left that question hanging. Do you want to add anything on it?

There is nothing that we can add.

My question is about proper measurement and assessment. You mentioned various actions that are being taken: the introduction of performance contracts with each prison, a menu-based approach and a new IT system for information sharing. There is machinery for delivering action, but what is the timescale for implementing the measures?

The simple answer is that we recommend that the Scottish Prison Service should use more of the new information that is becoming available to it to monitor how well its new plans are being delivered.

Is that not a key point? How will the service know whether its plans are succeeding or failing unless it is able to monitor them properly from the start?

You are right.

There is a fairly high turnover of short-term prisoners. From the document, one could work out the rough cost per prisoner for the large number of opportunities that are presented to prisoners. Would it help prisoners and the Scottish Prison Service if the service were able to give you a full cost per prisoner, rather than the overall bulk figures that you have for the estimated cost of correctional opportunities?

There are two issues. There is a need first to develop better information on costs generally. Once we have that, there is scope for benchmarking at prisons level and down to the level of individual prisoners. In the final column in exhibit 20, we made an initial attempt to work out the average spend per prisoner on correctional opportunities; there is some variability between prisons. However, that is only a starting point, until we have robust information. We need to get the information right before we can develop the benchmarking.

I will push the point a little further. From bullet point 2 of exhibit 5 on page 7, it is clear that, once the information is collected, some sensible decisions could be taken to focus expenditure on work-based skills training, for instance, which the English research suggests is effective. I do not expect that the situation is markedly different in Scotland.

It is worth mentioning that, historically, most correctional work has focused on long-term prisoners—those with sentences of more than four years. Latterly, the Scottish Prison Service has begun to work with prisoners with sentences of less than four years. It is moving to cover the area with higher turnover.

Are prisoners' needs being assessed consistently across the service, including in the private sector? Under paragraph 3.19, I note that the cost per prisoner learning hour varies significantly from £5.30 at HMP Kilmarnock to £12.35 at HMP Edinburgh. We have the figures, but do we know what the quality is at the other end? Are people coming out with qualifications that allow them to go into the employment market on their release? I have great difficulty with the fact that we can see the inputs but we do not see what comes out at the other end.

The nature of the education that is provided varies. At the vocational end, it is provided under contract by external providers such as further education colleges. It is difficult to be precise about the benefits in terms of employment simply because the information is not available. That is part of the advantage that will result from closer links with other organisations. The education that is provided during custody will be linked to the prisoner's reintegration into society when they leave custody. Although the links are being improved at the moment, the information that they will provide is not complete yet.

If I may, I will add something. There is not a lot of information about the output of the education provided at the moment. The contracts between the SPS and the providers—the further education colleges—are being renewed at the moment. One of the things that we note in the report is the fact that the tender for the new contracts put more focus on the output of education. More information should be available in future; it is not there at the moment.

Obviously, education is an important factor. A number of prisons also have throughcare facilities. Are the two linked and do they dovetail into the needs of the individual prisoner? Some prisoners will need a significant amount of support in learning and achieving a skill for release. Obviously, those prisoners will also need to do a great deal of work in the throughcare programme, whereas other prisoners will not need as much of either provision.

I am well aware of the key performance indicators as they relate to Kilmarnock. I know that, if the prison does not meet its KPIs, a financial penalty is imposed. Is there any indication of a levelling across the SPS? Will the requirements that are imposed in the contract at Kilmarnock be replicated elsewhere?

Your question raises two points. The first is that there is a well-structured assessment process in which the needs of prisoners are determined. The process varies depending not only on need but on the length of sentence. The longer the sentence, the more refreshing is undertaken.

The second point concerns levelling across the SPS. Kilmarnock is, of course, the single PFI prison in the SPS. As I said earlier, the principles that are adopted in defining the service are being applied to the other prisons. In effect, the contracts with prison governors are beginning to define business objectives. I cannot comment on whether a levelling up is taking place yet—the process is on-going.

As the committee has no further questions, I thank the Audit Scotland representatives for their evidence and briefing document. The committee will discuss its approach to the report in private when we reach agenda item 6.