Q. WHICH IS BETTER AT REDUCING RE-OFFENDING, PUBLIC OR PRIVATE SECTOR? A. NO-ONE KNOWS.

 In my recent post on probation privatisation (here), I noted that while Gauke claimed the private sector has cut reoffending by 2%, he didn't say how the NPS had done, but that I would ask.

MoJ say they do not in fact know how the NPS compares. The performance of the CRCs is measured against a 2011 baseline. Because the NPS isn't paid by results, no one thought to establish a baseline for their performance. So we don't know, and won't now ever know, whether the public sector did better or worse than the CRCs.

That is pretty odd. Granted, Grayling himself of course did not need that information, because he already 'knew', in his Trumpian way, that the private sector would do better. (Same reason he aborted the payment by results pilots in prisons). He was perhaps wise not to measure the actual performance of the NPS, because reality has an unpleasant habit of biting back at people who just 'know' things.

But I am surprised that officials did not think it worth knowing whether the public or private sector are 'better' at cutting reoffending. After all, the NPS in its present form is a new organisation, dealing with a new and more difficult mix of people: yet MoJ seem to have no interest in knowing whether it is successful. [MoJ point out that the case mix of the NPS and CRCs are very different so the two aren't directly comparable, so the reoffending rate for the NPS offenders would always tend to be higher - true, but I see no reason why you should compare the % reduction in the reconviction rate, if you see what I mean. ]

But I note that that in the 2 years before privatisation, when the only operator was the public sector NPS, there was a drop in reoffending for those given community sentences by 4.3%.  So, if you believe that probation's success can be measured by the reoffending rate, the public sector before privatisation did twice as well as the CRCs after privatisation. Tables C1a of the latest 'proven reoffending tables' here.  (MoJ will say that's not comparing like with like exactly and that's true, it isn't – but whose fault is that, MoJ? You chose ignorance, so now we have to use whatever data we can.)  So the line about CRCs making a difference is nonsense, even in its own terms.

For my own part, for all the reasons set out in my earlier post, I do not believe that changes in the reconviction rate are reliable as a measure of the achievement or failure of the correctional services.

Any more than changes in the overall crime rate (of which reoffending is, of course, just a small part) represent the success of otherwise of the criminal justice system.