§ Lord Aveburyasked Her Majesty's Government:
How much has been spent by the Probation Service and the Prison Service respectively on "cognitive skills" programmes; and whether they will give comparative statistics of the reconviction rates of persons who undertook these programmes, and of their control groups. [HL1249]
§ Baroness Scotland of AsthalThe expenditure on cognitive skills programmes for the two services is given below.
Probation Service £ million 1999–2000 2000–01 2001–02 2002–03 2003–04 Existing baseline 15 31 45 SR2000 15 111 25 Total 30 42 70 1The figures for 2002–03 and 2003–04 reflect the virement of funds as agreed with Hilary Benn in October 2002, ie a reduction of £20 million. The table shows annual expenditure (including some training costs), the money was spent on a suite of accredited programmes that tackle substance abuse, sex offending, violence and generic cognitive skills programmes. The completion target for 2003–04 is 15,000 offenders.
Prison Service £ million 1999–2000 2000–01 2001–02 2002–03 2003–04 Comprehensive Spending Review 7.3 8.4 8.9 8.9 8.9 Crime Reduction Programme 0.7 1.1 1.5 — — Spending Review 2000 — — — 3.6 11.6 Total 8.0 9.5 10.4 12.5 20.5 The table above relates to investment in establishments on offending behaviour programmes since 1999–2000. This includes generic "cognitive skills" programmes and specialist programmes for violent and sex offenders [but not drug programmes].
111WAIn addition to this specific investment there is an element of baseline funding which can not accurately be disaggregated from establishment budgets.
Comparison of. Reconviction Rates
The international "What Works" evidence base indicates that "cognitive skills programmes" can be effective in reducing reconviction by up to 10 percentage points. Three evaluations of the Prison Service cognitive skills programmes comparing offenders who undertook the programme with an appropriate comparison group have been published. The first evaluation of pre-accredited prison based cognitive skills programmes (Research Findings 161, Friendship et al, 2002) in England and Wales with adult men found participation produced a significant reduction in reconviction of up to 14 percentage points. The second evaluation of accredited programmes run with adult male prisoners (Research Findings 206, Falshaw et al, 2003) found no impact of participation on reconviction. The most recent evaluation (Research Findings 161, Cann et al, November 2003) found that the one-year reconviction rate for both adult men and young offender programme completers (ie dropouts removed from analysis) was significantly lower than for comparison groups. This difference was not maintained at two years and there was no impact when all programme starters were considered (ie including programme dropouts in analysis).
An evaluation of the STOP, a cognitive skills programme which ran in Mid-Glamorgan between 1991–92 ( Raynor and Vanstone 2001) found a reduction of five percentage points in reconviction rate for treated offenders compared with an untreated group at twelve months, but no difference in reconviction rates between two groups at 24 months. The research also found a reduction in the seriousness of reconviction for each of the follow-up periods for those who completed treatment.
Independent research has been commissioned by Home Office RDSD on behalf of the National Probation Service to evaluate the accredited programmes which only became widely available in 2001 in probation areas. This will be published later in 2004. This research will compare the reconviction rate of offenders attending the programme with a suitably matched comparison group.