Recommendation 5

It is vital that HMPPS understands more about what works best if it is to get the best outcomes from its limited funds for prisoner resettlement work. Although it received £550 million in the 2021 Spending Review to reduce reoffending, MoJ says that “difficult choices” lie ahead as it looks for ways to make savings and become more efficient. It is often easiest for departments to save money through cutting spending in “discretionary” areas, such as reducing reoffending. These funding decisions are made harder given many of HMPPS’s planned evaluations for resettlement programmes are still in their early stages, so it lacks the evidence base it needs to determine the effectiveness of its investments. For accommodation support, outcomes have remained stable with 76% of prison leavers from April 2022 to February 2023 in settled accommodation after three months, compared with 75% in 2021–22. HMI Probation found that HMPPS’s flagship initiative to provide 84 days of housing to prisoners at risk of homelessness was working well but securing longer term accommodation for prison leavers remained difficult. There are some encouraging signs within employment support initiatives, with 25% of prison leavers from April 2022 to February 2023 employed after six months, compared with 17% in 2021–22. But HMPPS’s plans to evaluate its employment initiatives are still in the early stages and as of May 2023 it had no firm plans to carry out essential impact evaluations. Determining whether recent improvements in prison leavers’ outcomes are attributable to its interventions or whether they may have happened anyway will be a key challenge for HMPPS. Recommendation 5: In its Treasury Minute response, HMPPS should set out its plan for evaluating its current resettlement initiatives, including confirming how its evaluations for resettlement programmes will inform its approach in the next spending review.