§ Lord Aveburyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether in view of the finding by the Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate that, in the five establishments studied in their evaluation of the Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme, there were no significant overall improvements in prisoners' behaviour, they will consider whether the resources allocated to the scheme could be more usefully applied to other projects such as enhanced prisoner education. [HL1323]
§ Lord Williams of MostynThe evaluation of incentives and earned privileges was conducted by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology on behalf of the Prison Service. The research was carried out at an early stage of the implementation of the policy when the five establishments involved had made varying degrees of progress towards operating fully developed schemes. The specific problems identified in the research findings are being addressed through modifications to the advice and instructions for governors on the operation of the policy.
There are no plans to discontinue operation of incentives and earned privileges policy, which is now well established and which underpins a number of other initiatives, such as drug-free wings, anti-bullying strategies, offending behaviour programmes and televisions in cells. Other than initial start-up costs, the local incentives and earned privileges schemes are designed to be resource neutral. They are an integral part of establishment regimes, and are managed by staff as part of their everyday duties, which already involve providing assessments of behaviour and performance at 28WA work and education as prisoners work towards targets in their sentence plans. The schemes do not divert resources from education or other initiatives and no significant resources would be freed up were the schemes to be halted.