Payment by results in the criminal justice system

Abstract

In December 2010 the Ministry of Justice published Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders, the government's Green Paper on criminal justice reform (Ministry of Justice, 2010). The primary purpose of this package of proposals was to refocus the criminal justice system (CJS) on reducing reoffending, and to achieve this the Green Paper proposes introducing payment by results (PBR) across the CJS, stating that ‘this is a radical and decentralising reform which will deliver a fundamental shift in the way rehabilitation is delivered’ (ibid.). Although the government's final proposals are still to be published at the time of writing, it appears certain that PBR will be central to the Ministry of Justice's agenda.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jon Collins

At time of writing, Jon Collins was Director of the Criminal Justice Alliance, a coalition of 57 leading justice organisations that works to establish a fairer and more effective CJS