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Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to focus on what we saw in practice. The Committee has tried to make it its business to get out and look at what happens in practice and what works. I commend the reports of our public evidence sessions and our future report on probation, which I hope will be as valuable in its own way as I think the report is that we are considering today. Of course, we know what happens in the United States. When the federal Government want to do things, they offer money to states to do them. They do not have the power to make them, so they offer them money. They can use the grants system under the Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act 2009 to support or persuade state and local governments to analyse criminal justice trends to find out what is driving the growth in their local jail and prison populations; to develop tailored policy options to reduce corrections expenditure and increase the effectiveness of current programmes to make communities safer; and to measure the impact of those changes and develop accountability measures. We found evidence of the potential for geographically targeted local initiatives to reduce expenditure if such partnerships and the agencies that make them up, including probation trusts, are free to use resources more flexibly. That is in line with the Government's emphasis on localism and the withdrawal of ring-fencing from local government. The first reaction of some people involved in the services is horror that a ring-fenced grant might now be used by the local authority for some purpose other than that for which it was originally introduced, but unless we give agencies, including local government, some freedom to move money around between different projects, innovative policies will not be developed. In this area, if agencies can work together and move money around a bit to where it is most effectively used, we can make progress. We talked about needing to get in early. The Government made announcements yesterday in relation to school funding and pre-school education for disadvantaged children. That is a crucial area. Not just the criminal justice system but many other parts of our system are crucial in determining whether some youngsters get involved in crime. Giving youngsters a better start is a key way of reducing the likelihood of their being drawn into criminality. The concept of justice reinvestment includes the concept of early intervention. The child who has to be excluded from school has stepped on to the escalator that can lead to repeat offending and regular imprisonment in the future, so such initiatives are very relevant to justice reinvestment. However, there is a risk that the financial climate will threaten existing initiatives that are proving promising. There is the Diamond initiative. I am trying to remember whether Sapphire and Diamond are the same scheme or two different ones, but obviously jewels are thought a good way of illustrating the fact that these are very valuable initiatives.