A study by a team at Oxford University has found that a £45 million government programme to reduce offending by under-18s has failed. Indeed, the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP), was less effective than routine probation (offenders sentenced to Supervision Orders and Community Rehabilitation Orders) which costs much less.

The response of the Youth Justice Board (YJB), which is responsible for crime by 10-17 year-olds, was to put out a press release claiming the scheme was a great success. This press release (14 September 2004) was accompanied by a highly misleading summary of the report.

The summary was published over a month before the full report was made available to journalists, so that they were unable to check the false claims of success.

• The YJB claimed that, during the 12 months after ISSP, there had been a 43% reduction in the frequency of offending, compared with 12 months before.
• The truth is that frequency of offending for the control group of similar young offenders not on ISSP fell by an even greater amount: 45% for those on Supervision Orders or Community Rehabilitation Orders and 62% for those serving Detention and Training Orders (DTOs).
• If the fall in offending was the result of the sentences, then the only valid conclusion is that Supervision Orders and Community Rehabilitation Orders without ISSP and DTOs without ISSP, were more effective than ISSP.

But the focus of the YJB on the frequency of offending before and after ISSP ignores a more revealing comparison between the reconviction rates of offenders on ISSP and those not on the programme. Here are the figures:

Percentage of Offenders Reconvicted 12 Months After the Start of ISSP

That is, for both community sentences and youth custody, ISSP was less effective than cheaper alternatives.

Handsome Social Dividends

The most scandalous abuse by the YJB is the way it treated the cost-benefit analysis. It gave the impression that the fall in offending after ISSP started was entirely the result of the programme, when it was not, as the full Oxford University report shows. The conclusion, in the summary issued by the YJB, is in large bold letters taking up about a quarter of the page. It claims that ISSP 'yielded handsome social dividends'. This contention is based on estimates of the 'social benefit' of the reduction in crime, which were put at about £40,000 per offender. The grand total 'saving' to society was said to have been about £4 million.

This claim is false. On the evidence presented in the Oxford University study there were no savings due to ISSP. The scheme was a costly waste of money. It would have been cheaper, and more effective in reducing crime, to have done nothing (which would have meant leaving offenders on Supervision Orders, Community Rehabilitation Orders and DTOs).

Indeed, it would have been more effective still to put the offenders in Young Offender Institutions, where they would not have committed any offences against the public. Instead, knowing full well that up to 92% were reconvicted within only 12 months, the Home Office persisted with the programme as an alternative to prison. Indeed, one of the official aims of ISSP is to reduce the use of custodial sentences and remands in custody.

Moreover, some offenders who might have been remanded in custody were given bail on condition that they took part in ISSP. The reconviction rate of offenders undergoing ISSP on bail after 12 months was 90%.

Home Office Disregarded Overseas Evidence of Failure

Overseas studies had revealed in 1993 that intensive supervision did not reduce offending. The US National Institute of Justice (NIJ) evaluated fourteen ISP programmes in nine states.⁽¹⁾ When ISP participants were compared to the control group, there were no significant differences in arrests. At the end of the one-year study period, about 37% of the ISP participants and 33% of the control group had been arrested. Moreover, technical violations were found to be 65% for ISP participants compared with 38% for the controls. In other words, while there was no evidence that the increased surveillance in the community deterred offenders from committing crimes, it did seem to increase the probability that both criminal and technical violations would be detected.

Click here for the online factsheet (PDF)

1. Petersilia, J. and Turner, S. (1993) Evaluating intensive supervision probation/parole: Results of a nationwide experiment, Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.