Measuring the output of the Criminal Justice System

UK Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity

Paul Cullinane:Head of Public Order and Safety Branch

Public Order and Safety• Comprises:

– Fire services– Civil and family courts– The Criminal Justice System

The Criminal Justice System• Criminal Justice System (CJS) comprises the

following services:– Police– Courts and prosecution– Prison– Probation

Individual versus collective services• Health and education are defined (within the

System National Accounts (SNA93)) as individual services

• These are services where:– It’s possible to observe the acquisition of the service by

an individual– The recipient has agreed to the provision of the service– It’s acquisition limits the availability of the service to

others

Collective services• SNA93 defines Public Order and Safety as a

collective service• SNA93 (ch9 para84) defines collective services as

those which:– Are delivered simultaneously to all members of the

community– Does not require the explicit agreement or active

participation of those receiving the service– Have no rivalry in acquisition

Individual versus collective services• For example an operation is given to a consenting

individual- therefore this is an individual service, whereas:

• Police patrolling the streets provide protection to the whole of the community: therefore this is a collective service

The output of the Criminal Justice System • For the purpose of this presentation, I will define

the output of the Criminal Justice System as:– Crime prevention– Bringing perpetrators to justice– Administering sentences

Three basic approaches

1. Measure activities of individual sections of CJS (by e.g. using separate CWAIs)

– Providing information on the different components of the CJS

2. View the CJS as two separate stages1. Bringing individuals to Justice2. Administering sentencesN.B. This does not attempt measure those activities

directly related to crime prevention3. Econometric approach

– Output relates to the effects on overall crime rates

The first approach• Separately measure the output of the separate

agencies involved in delivering Criminal Justice:– Police– Courts and prosecution– Prison– Probation

• Aggregate these components

Viewing the CJS as two discrete stages• Developed by the Home Office, Office for

Criminal Justice Reform, Department for Constitutional Affairs, Crown Prosecution Service (May 2005)

• Appreciates the interdependence of the agencies involved in each stage:1. The first stage recognises that the police, CPS and

Courts all work together to bring individuals to justice.

2. The second stage recognises that Correctional Services (mainly prison and probation) – now under the National Offender Management System - are tasked to administer the sentences imposed by the courts

Stage 1: What does ‘bringing individuals to justice’ involve?• Activities

– Recording the crime– Investigating a crime– Identifying and apprehending suspects– Preparing and administering court cases

• Output– Completed court cases

• Recording and investigating crimes, identifying and apprehending suspects, and preparing and administering court cases are all intermediate inputs, where the output is defined as a completed court case

• This involves the collaboration of:– Police– Prosecution and Court services

How do we produce the final output series for ‘bringing offenders to justice’• If we define the output as the number of court

cases:– We can weight together the number of court cases using

the average cost of different types of case, where the type of case is defined by the

• the type of crime (e.g. burglary, murder)• and sanction imposed (e.g. community service, prison

sentence)

(These costs would include police (recording, investigating a crime, identifying and apprehending the suspect), prosecution (preparing evidence) and court costs.)

Stage 2 National Offender Management Scheme (NOMS): Administering sentences• Prisons

– Number of prisoner nights• Probation

– Number of supervision weeks• Offender behaviour programmes:

– Programmes completed– Education awards– Resettlement interventions– Drug treatment and testing orders

• Justice and reparation– Number of victims contacted– Probation reports

Quality within the prison service• There are two aspects to measuring the output of

an agency– Quantity– Quality

• For the prison service, as well as measuring the quantity of the service being provided by e.g. No of prisoner nights, we also need to measure the quality of the service

• Two key areas that could be developed– Protecting prisoners from harm– overcrowding

Key message• It is possible to view the work involved in bringing

offenders to justice (investigating and detecting crimes, preparing cases, prosecuting and administering the courts) can be viewed as the joint output of police, CPS and court services, resulting in court cases.

• This approach recognises the interdependence between the agencies involved

• Although, it will not provide you with separate measures of output for the different agencies involved

• Does not attempt to measure activities directly related to crime prevention