The Justice Data Lab has been launched as a pilot for one year from April 2013. During this year, a small team from Analytical Services within the Ministry of Justice will support organisations that provide offender services by allowing them easy access to aggregate re-offending data, specific to the group of people they have worked with. This will support organisations in understanding their effectiveness at reducing reoffending.

The service model involves organisations sending the Justice Data Lab team details of the offenders they have worked with along with information about the specific intervention they have delivered. The Data Lab team then matches these offenders to MoJ’s central datasets and returns the re-offending rate of this particular cohort, alongside that of a control group of offenders with very similar characteristics in order to better identify the impact of the organisation’s work.

There are two publication types:

A summary of the findings of the Justice Data Lab pilot to date (2 April to 31 January 2014).
Tailored reports about the re-offending outcomes of services or interventions delivered by each of the organisations who have requested information through the Justice Data Lab pilot. Each report is an Official Statistic and will show the results of the reoffending analysis for the particular service or intervention delivered by the organisation who delivered it.

For further information about the Justice Data Lab, please refer to the following guidance

Update on the Justice Data Lab Service

The Justice Data Lab team have now bought the 2011 re-offending data into the service. It is now possible for an organisation to submit information on the individuals it was working with during 2011, in addition to during the years 2002 to 2010.

Main findings to date

To date, the Justice Data Lab has received 76 requests for re-offending information, including 46 reports which have already been published. A further 9 are now complete and ready for publication, bringing the total of completed reports to 55.

To date, there have been 11 requests that could not be processed as the minimum criteria for analyses through the Data Lab had not been met, and one further request that was withdrawn by the submitting organisation. The remaining requests will be published in future monthly releases of these statistics.

Of the 9 reports being published this month:

Six reports look at the impact of support services provided by Home Group. Home Group was founded in 1930’s by an Act of Parliament to provide housing services to individuals in the North East of England. The organisation has grown considerably since then, including joining with several other organisations to provide a national service. Stonham is the care and support division of Home Group, through which the organisation works with almost 30,000 vulnerable people in 500 supported housing, justice and health services each year. Stonham joined Home Group in 1997 and became a full division in July 2004.

The analyses assess three different types of support services provided by Home Group:
- Residential and support
- Short Term Accommodation (for persons on Home Detention Curfew)
- Support Only

Two analyses were carried out for the Residential and support service - one for those individuals who received the service whilst on community sentences and another for those individuals who received the service after prison sentences. Both of these analyses showed a statistically significant increase in re-offending. It is possible that this could be explained by characteristics (in particular factors associated with homelessness or accommodation issues) of this cohort which are not reflected in the MoJ underlying data. Additionally, the service is provided to some offenders that have mental health problems and multiple complex needs. It can be very challenging to model the effect of services received by persons with mental health issues and multiple complex needs, so the negative result will also reflect the fact that the group that Home Group worked with will typically be much harder to help.

A further analysis was carried out for those individuals who received the Short Term Accommodation service whilst on Home Detention Curfew following release from custody. This analysis shows a statistically significant reduction in re-offending.

A final three analyses were carried out for the Support Only service - one for those individuals who received the service whilst on community sentences, another for those individuals who received the service after prison sentences, and an overall analysis for those individuals who received the support whilst on community sentences or after prison sentences. All three of these analyses showed that the impact of this service on re-offending is currently inconclusive.

One report looks at the effectiveness of the Adelaide House Female Approved Premise. This analysis shows a statistically significant reduction in re-offending.
One report looks at the effectiveness of the Warwickshire Youth Justice Service. This analysis shows a statistically significant reduction in re-offending.
One report looks at the effectiveness of the employment and skills programme run by Everyday Skills. This analysis shows that the impact of this intervention on re-offending is currently inconclusive.

Reasons for an inconclusive result include; the sample of individuals provided by the organisation was too small to detect a statistically significant change in behaviour; or that the service or programme genuinely does not affect re-offending behaviour. However, it is very difficult to differentiate between these reasons in the analysis, so the organisations are recommended to submit larger samples of data when it becomes available. Detailed discussion of results and interpretation is available in the individual reports.

The bulletin is produced and handled by the Ministry’s analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons: Ministry of Justice Secretary of State, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Permanent Secretary, Policy Advisers for reducing re-offending, Policy Advisors for the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme, and relevant Press Officers and Special Advisers.

Published 13 February 2014

Justice Data Lab statistics: February 2014

Documents