Justice Data Lab statistics: March 2014
The report is released by the Ministry of Justice and produced in accordance with arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.
Documents
Details
Introduction
The Justice Data Lab was established in April 2013. Participating organisations supply the Justice Data Lab with details of the offenders they have worked with and information about the services they have provided. The Justice Data Lab team matches these individuals to the re-offending datasets held within the Ministry of Justice and uses statistical modeling techniques to generate a matched control group of individuals with very similar characteristics; including demographic, criminal history and employment and benefit history.
As standard, the Justice Data Lab supplies aggregate one-year proven re-offending rates for that group, and a matched control group of similar offenders. The re-offending rates for the organisation’s group and the matched control group are compared using statistical testing to assess the impact of the organisation’s work on reducing re-offending. We also include the frequency of proven re-offending over the one year as standard following feedback from users.
There are three publication types:
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A summary of the findings of the Justice Data Lab pilot to date (2nd April 2013 to 28th February 2014).
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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 re-offending analysis for the particular service or intervention delivered by the organisation who delivered it.
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This month the Justice Data Lab team have also produced a document reflecting on the successes and challenges of the pilot, called “Justice Data Lab; The pilot year”. This document shares learning from the experience of running the pilot, details the future of the Justice Data Lab and demonstrates the commitment to continual improvement in the Justice Data Lab service.
For further information about the Justice Data Lab, please refer to the following guidance: www.justice.gov.uk/justice-data-lab
Update on the Justice Data Lab Service
We are pleased to announce that the Justice Data Lab will continue to be piloted for another year. The service will continue to be free at the point of use, and the same service model will continue to operate, as detailed in our guidance. Following feedback from users, we are hoping to bring in the following improvements to the service:
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improving the Data Upload Template with further questions about referral routes to the organisation, and where the intervention or programme was received. We will release an updated version of our Data Upload Template over the next few weeks alongside updates to our guidance documents.
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providing additional metrics of re-offending in particular looking at measures of severity
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improving our underlying data, including bringing Offender Assessment (OASys) information into analyses
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taking account of area in our analysis where possible
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within a request, giving the re-offending outcomes by different demographic profiles where possible
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providing power calculations to indicate necessary sample sizes for results which are inconclusive.
These improvements are discussed in more detail in the document “Justice Data Lab; the pilot year”
Main findings to date
To date, the Justice Data Lab has received 80 requests for re-offending information, including 55 reports which have already been published. A further 2 are now complete and ready for publication, bringing the total of completed reports to 57.
To date, there have been 12 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 2 reports being published this month:
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One report looks at the effectiveness of The Footprints Project. This analysis shows that the impact of this intervention on re-offending is currently inconclusive.
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One report looks at the effectiveness of the Family Man programme run by Safe Ground. This analysis includes offenders from the two previous Safe Ground requests published in October and November 2013. This analysis shows that the impact of this intervention on re-offending is currently inconclusive.
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, Director of Sentencing and Rehabilitation Policy unit, Policy Advisers for reducing re-offending, Policy Advisors for the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme, and relevant Press Officers and Special Advisers.