Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 2
Seventy-Eighth Report - Resettlement support for prison leavers
Published 11 Nov 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Improving resettlement support for prison leavers All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
We are concerned that government is not doing enough to support prisoners with substance misuse needs before they are released. Despite the previous Committee’s recommendations in 2017, HMPPS and NHS England have been slow to improve the collection and sharing of prison leavers’ data, limiting their ability to provide appropriate support and monitor outcomes. This lack of progress puts the successful resettlement of offenders with substance misuse needs at risk. HMPPS is working on ways to improve data sharing around substance misuse through initiatives such as the Probation Notification Actioning Plan, which will enable drug treatment providers in prisons to notify the Probation Service of referrals they have made to providers in the community. However, support in prisons still lacks consistency, with treatment options often dependent on the length of prison stay. We are concerned that HMPPS and the relevant health bodies involved in resettlement do not seem to have a consistent definition of success when measuring outcomes for substance misuse. Substance misuse is also the only area where the Cross-Government Reducing Reoffending Board has not agreed key responsibilities or performance reporting arrangements. Recommendation 2: The Cross-Government Reducing Reoffending Board should agree metrics to measure end-to-end success in treating substance misuse needs in offenders and routinely publish how it is performing against these metrics. 6 Resettlement support for prison leavers
From: Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Eighth Report - Resettlement support for prison leavers (HC 1329), 11 November 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 February 2024 (deadline 11 January 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it agrees with each of the Committee's recommendations on resettlement support for prison leavers, giving target dates for several of them.
- On inequalities, HMPPS is planning a programme of work to understand disparities in resettlement outcomes, and says that "By April 2025" it will deliver this analysis across prioritised thematic areas.
- On an action plan, HMPPS will "respond to the Committee by the six-month deadline" and says its plan will aim for "an adequate and consistent resettlement service" for all prison leavers by April 2025.
- On substance misuse, MoJ and the Department of Health and Social Care will develop a proposal on metrics, and the government says it will publish these metrics routinely, with a target implementation date of summer 2024.
- On evaluation, impact evaluations are "expected to be complete" by summer 2024, though findings on impact for some initiatives will only be available beyond 2024.