Published 2007 (ISBN: 1 905370 24 5) Price £9.95
This publication provides an insight into the incentives, outcomes and future developments relating to offender management schemes for young people. It provides a critical review of the on-going National Grid young offenders programme and builds on the findings of the initial study of the pilot scheme that the Smith Institute published back in 2005. The analysis by the SMART Company is rooted in real-life experience and draws on interviews with people from the three key stakeholder groups: prisons, businesses and offenders – as well as with opinion formers and politicians. As the report states, the Cabinet Office’s Social Exclusion Unit has estimated that the cost of dealing with recorded crime by ex-offenders is as high as £11 billion a year, with over 75% of male young offenders reoffending within two years of release. By finding prisoners sustainable training and work at the end of a custodial sentence, this type of programme hopes to create a smooth transition between prison and life after release, while offering businesses recruitment opportunities and prisons a way to provide support and training for prisoners. As Sir John Parker says in his foreword, it is a real “win:win” situation. This report shows how, in the space of two years, the scheme has successfully been rolled out to five different sectors and to over 80 large businesses. A thousand offenders will have completed the programme by this autumn, and for those who have already done so the reoffending rate is, remarkably, only 7%. As is made clear, the programme demonstrates the measurable benefits of exercising corporate responsibility, not least by offering companies a way of building links with some of the most difficult-to-reach people in our communities.