Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 20
20
In evaluating the effect of its interventions, the Ministry told us it is difficult to...
Conclusion
In evaluating the effect of its interventions, the Ministry told us it is difficult to attribute changes in the number of women in custody to specific actions, such as the use of out- of-court disposals, pre-sentence reports and community interventions. It accepted that it should be able to evaluate its interventions as it is spending taxpayers’ money.59 It told us that patchy data was part of the problem but that it was still building the necessary data, several years after the strategy was published.60 The Ministry told us that it is evaluating some individual interventions, for example out-of-court disposals and housing advisers in prisons (both for men and women) but that evaluating interventions takes time especially in relation to any impact on reoffending.61 It does not currently have plans to evaluate its £9.5 million in grants to community services.62
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
6: PAC conclusion: The Ministry does not yet know the effectiveness of its interventions, or whether it is achieving its aims. This limits its ability to identify and share best practice and to understand where it needs to invest to achieve its aims. 6: PAC recommendation: The Ministry should publish a monitoring and evaluation plan by September 2022. This should include the following: • how it will work with other government departments to evaluate the main strategy commitments and build on the evidence of what works to aid funding decisions; • the specific performance measures it will use to assess progress towards its aims. For example, how women are dealt with at various stages – before court proceedings are started, while they are progressing through the courts, and when they are sentenced; and whether they offend in future; and • how it will use performance measures, along with other qualitative methods to identify good practice in local areas and what it will do to support its adoption widely. 6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation Target implementation date: Summer 2022 6.2 The Female Offenders Strategy Delivery Plan intended for publication in Summer 2022 will contain an outcomes framework, which will include clear metrics for measuring progress against commitments, drawing on a range of data sources including published evaluations, where there are sufficient samples of females for reliable analysis. 6.3 Separate from the Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan, the department plans to publish an Evaluation and Prototyping Strategy later this year that reflects the strong commitment to maintaining and developing a robust evidence base that can tell us what works, for who, how and why. In line with Government Social Research Publication Protocol, the department publishes all research that generates robust and reliable information, including evaluation of interventions for female offenders.