C A S E S T U D Y 1

A marketing strategy to reduceUK prison numbersMartine Stead, Laura McDermott and Gerard Hastings

1. Introduction‘Rethinking Crime and Punishment’ (RCP) was a four-year initiative(2001–2005) in the UK to raise the level of debate about how to deal withoffenders and to reduce the rising prison population. A detailed socialmarketing strategy (Hastings et al., 2002) was developed to guide the ini-tiative’s priorities and planning. This case summarizes some of its keycomponents.

2. Problem definitionThe UK prison population is disproportionately high compared to othercountries with similar crime rates and is continuing to rise at an unsus-tainable rate. In 2000, before the start of the initiative, the England andWales prison population was projected to reach 80,000 and the currentprojection is actually higher: between 90,250 and 106,550 by 2013 (de Silvaet al., 2006). Likewise, the prison population projections for Scotland arebetween 6700 and 8500 by 2010 – an upward trend in comparison to for-mer levels (Scottish Executive, 2002). This places great pressure on theprisons, and the service finds it increasingly difficult to offer rehabilitativeprogrammes. Some estimates suggest that prison numbers would fall byone-third if elderly, young and minor offenders were decarcerated.

The rising prison population cannot be fully explained by crime trends,and is also influenced by other political, social and cultural factors:

● Sentencing policy and practice. Successive changes in sentencing policyhave made the courts more punitive in many areas, resulting inincreased use of custody even for minor offences.

● Crime is a political football. Both major political parties in the UK haveexploited and sustained public concern about crime. This has resultedin punitive and reactive policies, short-term political oneupmanshipand a chronic lack of vision.

● Public fear of crime. Surveys show public fear of crime, support forprison and a lack of faith in the criminal justice sector. Qualitative

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research suggests a more complex picture, with a less punitive publicthan the surveys imply.

● Sensationalist media. Dramatic and unrealistic coverage of crime in theentertainment and news media have helped to sustain public demandfor prison.

Reoffending rates among those released from prison are high, and manyoffenders leave prison ‘no better equipped to fit into society than whenthey entered it’, suggesting prison is ineffective for many offenders(Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, 2004). It is increasingly argued amongcriminal justice experts that community sentences, particularly thosebased on restorative justice principles that give a voice to the victim, represent a better way forward for non-serious offenders.

3. Competitive analysisThe main competitive barrier was public opinion: the public demandsincreasingly harsh approaches to crime, constraining how politicians,judges and magistrates respond, leading them to fear a media and publicbacklash if they are seen to be too ‘soft on crime’. To address this, therewas a need to convert the public’s, and many other stakeholders’, existingambivalence about prison into dissonance: to strengthen already held per-ceptions that prison is a meaningless and ineffective response for manyoffenders, and weaken current attachment to it as a solution. At the sametime, there was a need to improve the image of non-custodial alternatives.

4. Stakeholder analysisThe key stakeholder groups are shown in Figure CS1.1. The closer agroup’s proximity to the centre of the circle, the more direct its influenceon imprisonment rates.

All the stakeholders have a role to play, and the full marketing plananalysed each of their needs, the benefits to each of a reduction in prisonnumbers and their potential role in the reduction process. For the sake ofbrevity, in this case we will concentrate on the inner circle of DecisionMakers who comprise the judiciary and politicians, as well as the PrimaryInfluencers who comprise the media and general public.

5. Aims and objectivesOne overall aim of the Rethinking Crime and Punishment initiative wasto reduce society’s attachment to the use of prison as a response to crime. As thecompetitive analysis highlighted, this divides into two complementary

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marketing aims: (i) demarketing prison and (ii) marketing non-custodialalternatives to prison.

For our target groups, these devolved into three marketing objectives:

(a) Encourage consensus on the cause of rising prison numbers and exam-ine the role of sentencing.

(b) Increase dissonance about prison as a sentencing option for manyoffences.

(c) Improve the perceived and actual effectiveness of non-custodial solutions.

6. Formulation of strategyA marketing offering was then devised to meet each objective (Table CS1.2).

231A marketing strategy to reduce UK prison numbers

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Figure CS1.1Stakeholder groups.

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7. Research and evaluationThe development of the marketing plan was guided by three stages ofresearch:

● A literature review on the history and causes of the rising prison popula-tion and the evidence for the effectiveness of different sentencing options.

● Stakeholder research, comprising 41 interviews with politicians, sen-tencers, criminal justice professionals, police, journalists and socialchange experts.

● Consumer research, comprising 12 focus groups to explore concerns,priorities and hopes about sentencing and the criminal justice system.

The evaluation comprised interviews with 27 key commentators fromparliamentary, civil service, judicial and media backgrounds.

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Table CS1.1 Stakeholder needs and benefits

Stakeholder Needs Benefits from reducing Potential role in RCPprison numbers

Politicians ● Public confidence ● Solution to prison ● Legislate to reduce in CJS. crisis. prison numbers.

● Deliver on CJS ● Bigger budget for ● Set media and public performance pledges. more popular measures. agendas.

● Belief in electoral and ● De-escalation of law media advantage in and order debate.‘softer’ approach.

Judiciary ● Deliver effective ● Rewarding feedback ● Send fewer people to sentencing. on sentencing decisions. prison.

● Independence. ● Making a difference. ● Communicate rationale● Robust, efficient for non-custodial

sentencing ‘products’. sentences to public through speeches, mediapronouncements and other PR.

Media ● Commercial success. ● Compelling human ● Threat and opportunity● Good stories. stories (redemption, (agenda setting, crusading

payback, journalism).transformation).

Public ● Safety rather than ● Feel safe because ● Influence politicians, the vengeance. something effective is media and sentencers.

● Support for prison. being done. ● Strengthen perceptions● Simple solution to ● Offer real justice for that prison is

serious issue. the victims of crime. meaningless for someoffenders.

● Weaken attachment toprison as the sole solution to crime.

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8. OutcomesAssessing the impact of complex long-term interventions, particularlythose like the RCP, which seek to influence public policy and social norms,is always challenging (Stead et al., 2002). Furthermore, such changes typi-cally have multiple causes (Clark and McLeroy, 1998) and it is difficult todisentangle the contribution of any single initiative or event.

Official statistics suggest that the UK prison population has continuedto rise, but so too has the number of non-custodial disposals given out bythe courts. These general data also mask some interesting variations: therehas been a decline in the number of short-term prison sentences (a keycontributor to the large prison population – see ‘Problem definition’) andfewer women are being sent to prison (the focus group research revealedthe imprisoning of women was one area in which the public are anti-incarceration).

An independent evaluation of RCP (Braggins, 2005), comprising 27 stake-holder interviews, suggested that politicians’ thinking about short-termsentences had shifted towards the view that they were costly and ineffect-ive, and that the language around crime and punishment was softening.The RCP was felt to have helped to ‘create a climate in which politiciansare enabled to be a bit braver’. Informants also welcomed RCP’s creationand dissemination of several key pieces of evidence and reports that werefelt to move the debate on and give campaigners greater confidence intheir arguments. Nevertheless, there was strong acknowledgement by

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Table CS1.2 Examples of marketing offerings devised to meet each objective

Objective Marketing offering

Create consensus that current Price: Grants awarded to respected academics to research andsentencing practice is increasing publish on this issue, thereby showing the high cost of currentprison numbers system; active dissemination of conclusions through

peer-to-peer channels.

Increase dissonance about Marketing communications: Independent enquiry led by seniorprison as a sentencing option judge into the drawbacks of community sentences and thefor many offences adequacy of alternatives; restorative justice seminar held in

Downing Street; senior ministers invited to visit community sentence projects; RCP-funded research on women, children,problem drug users and the mentally ill in prison to demonstrate the costs to society of imprisoning these groups and the role of alternatives to custody, such as drug treatment and testing orders.

Improve the perceived and Product: 2002 Sentencing Review (independent of RCP) createdactual effectiveness of a single, flexible community penalty; funded and disseminated restorative solutions demonstration projects; major cost-effectiveness review

commissioned; public awareness and education.

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informants that it was difficult to isolate the impact of RCP because manyother initiatives and events over the period had contributed to changes inthe same direction: ‘If you’re pushing at an open door, it’s more difficultto attribute cause than if you’re going against the flow.’

Two RCP recommendations have had an impact on raising the profile ofcommunity penalties – the need for greater community involvement andthe need for more residential drug treatment. Also, many of the RCP-funded projects have been successful in helping to empower communitymembers and build capacity. Local Crime, Community Sentence is one exam-ple of such a programme, in which probation officers and magistrates givepresentations to community groups (http://www.lcs.org.uk).

A follow-up RCP is currently being implemented – Rethinking Crimeand Punishment Phase 2 (RCP2), which aims to put into practice the rec-ommendations from RCP. The project comprises a focused programme ofpractical work in one region of the country, the Thames Valley, plus aneffort to identify and disseminate what works best through an annualawards scheme.

ReferencesBraggins J. (2005). Rethinking Crime and Punishment: An external evaluation,

February. London: Centre for Strategy and Communication.Clark N.M. and McLeroy K.R. (1998). Reviewing the evidence for health promo-

tion in the United States. In Quality, Evidence and Effectiveness in Health Promotion(Davies J.K. and MacDonald G., eds), pp. 21–46. London: Routledge.

de Silva N., Cowell P., Chow T. and Worthington P. (2006). Prison PopulationProjections 2006–2013, England and Wales. London: Direct Communications Unit.

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (2004). Rethinking Crime and Punishment: The Report.London: Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

Hastings G.B., Stead M. and MacFadyen L. (2002). Reducing prison numbers: doesmarketing hold the key? Criminal Justice Matters (CJM), 49: 20–21, 43.

Scottish Executive (2002). Scottish Prison Service Estate Consultation Paper.Edinburgh: Estates Review Team, Scottish Prison Service Headquarters.

Stead M., Hastings G.B. and Eadie D. (2002). The challenge of evaluating complexinterventions: a framework for evaluating media advocacy. Health EducationResearch Theory and Practice, 17(3): 351–364.

Lessons learned1. Social marketing need not be limited to health behaviour change, but

can also be effectively applied to other arenas. The RCP demonstrateshow it can be applied to the criminal justice system.

2. The type of competition faced by social marketers differs from thatfaced by commercial marketing and often requires social marketers tothink creatively to address competitive barriers to behaviour change.

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In the RCP case, a unique and particularly complex type of competi-tion was addressed – public opinion that prison is the only effectivesolution for criminals.

3. It is important to analyse the stakeholder environment in every socialmarketing strategy. In this case, politicians were concerned about amedia and public backlash if they were seen as too soft on criminals. Theuse of a strategic marketing offering successfully addressed this fear.

Case study questions1. Q: List two factors that contribute to the UK’s public perception that

prison is the only effective solution for criminals and explain why.A: (i) Sensationalized media – dramatic/unrealistic coverage of crime

in the news and entertainment industry. (ii) Fear – fear of crime orlack of faith in the criminal justice system.

2. Q: What role did the RCP-funded research play in an effort to increasedissonance about prison and of what component of the overallmarketing offering was this a part?

A: Four population groups were identified as candidates for alterna-tive solutions to custody – women, children, problem drug usersand the mentally ill – for the marketing communications offering.

3. Q: Based on the evaluation results of the RCP social marketing pro-gramme, what is an important consideration when measuring thesuccess of this programme, as well as other social marketing pro-grammes aimed at influencing behaviour change?

A: Behaviour change as a direct result of a social marketing initiativeis difficult to isolate. Although the evaluation results foundchanges in politicians’ thinking, the direct impact of RCP is diffi-cult to determine due to other initiatives and events that occurredduring the time of the strategy, which may also have contributed tobehaviour change. This points up the challenges of evaluation andthe need to think flexibly about methodology.

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