The lamp posts are not for bending....

In my ongoing explorations of the statistics and rationale underlying the Government's resolute commitment to Payment by Results (PbR), I asked them a series of further questions after their responses to my last set. (These two blog posts show their answers and my queries). Here is a copy of the letter I received yesterday (my questions in bold, their answers in italics):

Many thanks for your email & attached response to my questions. I note what you say about using section 22 not to answer my questions 15 & 16. I will await publication of the new batch of statistics on 25/7/13 naturally. I reserve the right to appeal against your decision subject to this information being able to answer my questions.

With regard to some of your other answers, I would see further clarification as follows:

a)      With regard to Q2, you have not answered my question. You have merely reported on a series of facts and not explained the reasoning behind the decision to produce the statistics early. Please, may I request again, for my question to be answered fully. If that is difficult, I am happy to submit an FoI inquiry requesting all the email correspondence between senior civil servants and the Minister which led up to the early publication of this data. Which would you prefer?

As set out in the publication, we published the figures in an ad hoc bulletin on 13 June, rather than waiting to publish them in the Proven Re-offending statistics bulletin on 25 July, to ensure the information was made public as soon as it was available. This is in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/) which requires us to “release statistical reports as soon as they are judged ready, so that there is no opportunity or perception of opportunity, for the release to be withheld or delayed”. 

Once the MoJ Chief Statistician had judged that we were in a position to publish statistically robust interim re-conviction figures, we published them at the earliest opportunity.

b)     In your answer to 6/7 (you correctly identified that this is one question where a rogue carriage return had crept in) you referred me to “Table B3 of annex B from the MoJ’s proven re-offending statistics quarterly bulletin”. I looked at this table carefully but I could not see how it answered my query about the extent of the difference between national stats and the pilot’s stats. Please could you be more precise and show me more clearly how this factor is likely to affect comparisons. Thank you.

The two middle columns of table B3 show (for offenders released from prison or starting court orders) re-offending figures including and excluding cautions. 

Looking at the top section headed ‘Proportion’, column 2 (“Previous measure: re-convictions (prison and probation offenders only), whole year”) is the re-conviction rate excluding cautions – i.e. the Doncaster measure. Column 3 (“New measure: re-offending (prison and probation offenders only), whole year”) is the re-offending rate, including cautions – i.e. the National Statistics measure. This shows, for example, for offenders discharged from prison or starting a court order in 2009 the proportion re-convicted was 34.7 per cent (column 2) but when we also count offences that receive a caution the proportion increases to 36.2 per cent (column 3). The difference over time is small - between 1 and 2 percentage points.

As noted in our previous response, we have not produced alternative interim figures on what the impact would be if different rules (such as including cautions) had applied to the pilots. However, the figures in table B3 show the impact at a national level of including/excluding cautions.

c)     You answer to Q9 confirms, I think, that there is no element of randomisation in the selection of the ‘control’ comparator groups. As a scientist I find this most disturbing and I am not sure about you, but I don’t I would be prepared to undergo a course of medical treatment that had gone through a “quasi-experiment”. As PbR spreads (as I assume the Governments wants), it will become increasingly difficult to find comparator groups on this basis. Moreover, I cannot see, no matter how independent are the people who are choosing the comparator groups that this process will control for hidden factors. As a consequence, I do not think that you have yet answered my query “what is your considered professional judgement as a statistician as to the validity of these results to guide future practice?” I look forward to your thoughts. Thanks

The Payment by Results pilots were set up to test a range of approaches to achieving reductions in re-offending through paying by results, and different pilots use different payment mechanism designs. 

Propensity Score Matching (PSM) is a well established statistical method for creating a control group when it is not possible to carry out a randomised control trial (as it is not in this case). As set out in our previous response, the control group will be selected, using the published PSM methodology, by an Independent Assessor.

The Ministry of Justice’s  consultation response, Transforming Rehabilitation: a Strategy for Reform, described how, under our proposals, to be fully rewarded, providers will need to achieve both an agreed reduction in the number of offenders who go on to commit further offences, and a reduction in the number of further offences committed by the cohort of offenders for which they are responsible.

The consultation response stated that we would discuss the final details of the payment mechanism with practitioners and potential providers. To support this engagement, we have since published a Payment Mechanism Straw Man- available at www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/rehab-prog/payment-mechanism.pdf. 

While the final design of the payment mechanism is still to be determined, the model set out in the straw man discusses setting a baseline for all reduction in re-offending targets for each Contract Package Area on the basis of average quarterly re-offending figures for the most recent year that data is available. 

d)    In answer to Q10 you say “The five percentage point reduction target was agreed after analysis of historic reconviction rates established that this would illustrate a demonstrable difference which could be attributed to the new system and not just natural variation” (with my added highlight). However later on you also say “we have not carried out statistical significance tests on the interim figures because, when it comes to the final results, neither pilot will be assessed on the basis of whether they have achieved a statistically significant change”. How can these two statements be compatible? Forgive me, but it seems to me you are using significant differences when it suits you and not when it does not…? Please justify this approach.
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e)     Moreover, given this last statement, may I confirm that taxpayers’ money may well be doled out to the suppliers on what could be a random happenchance difference in results rather than one which is (say) beyond a standard 5% statistical threshold of significance? I am interested in your views here too.

I can confirm that testing was used in the design of the Payment by Results pilots at both Peterborough and Doncaster, to ensure that the minimum targets for outcome-based payments in each pilot are set at such a level that we can be confident that to achieve them a provider must achieve an improvement which is attributable to their interventions and not just natural variation.  Because this significance testing is built in at the target setting stage, there is then no need to conduct tests for significance again once outcomes are calculated; instead, outcomes can be judged on whether or not they exceed the targets. The benefit of carrying out the statistical significance testing prior to the start of the pilot rather than at the end is that the ‘goal posts’ can then be set and known by all parties at the outset. In addition, because these targets are set in terms of the final 12-month re-offending measure it is not helpful to carry out statistical significance tests on the interim figures, which measure re-offending over just 6 months and, in the case of the figures for the Doncaster pilot, have smaller offender cohorts than the final measure. 

f)       Your answer to my question 12 surprised me. It is well known, I thought, that certain crimes rise in the winter such as burglary due to the darker evenings etc. Whilst I recognise that you are comparing ‘like with like’ that does not exclude a seasonal effect, it could merely exacerbate one since your time sample is not across the whole year. Why not provide the summer six monthly data as well? 

Using Doncaster as an example, we are not saying that the re-conviction rate for the Oct-Mar 6 months will necessarily match the re-conviction rate for the Apr-Sep 6 months. In fact, because of seasonality it is more likely that they will differ, as you say. Therefore, because we want to compare re-conviction rates over time, we must use the same period for the comparison in each year – that is comparing the various Oct-Mar periods over time. If instead we compared the pilot period of Oct11-Mar12 with say Jan09-Jun09, any difference could reflect a real change, but it could also simply reflect seasonal effects. By comparing the equivalent period in each year, we eliminate this risk of seasonality. 

g) I hear what you say about the 19 month period but it really does look shady! Why not 18 months? Why not 6 months? Hopefully the overall data will clear all this up.

We process and analyse re-offending data on a quarterly basis. For the interim figures released on 13 June, the latest quarter for which we could provide 6 month re-conviction figures was the quarter ending March 2012. The Peterborough pilot started in September 2010 (partway through a quarter), which meant we were able to report on a maximum of 19 months of the first Peterborough cohort period. We could have chosen to round this down to a more conventional 18 months but we took the decision that we should include as much of the data as possible to maximise the robustness of the figures. The Doncaster pilot began in October 2011, at the start of a quarter, meaning we reported on a more conventional looking 6 month period.


It is all getting rather convoluted (which is one of the problems I have with PbR in that payments will steadily become more and more like arguments about how many angels can fit on a pin head). However, there are some points I will be raising from all this... (for another day)

But what are your thoughts? What questions now need to be asked?

Meanwhile, if you have not read it, here is my blog post about the next batch results that were published a couple of weeks ago.

Technology & the Queen's Peace: a survey

As preparation for a conference in the spring of next year, I want to carry out a survey. I need your help. I would be most grateful if you could answer the questions below. There are just three and you don't even have to answer all three if you do not want to.

You can post your answers below anonymously or using your name. Or you can email me (JonSHarvey@ymail.com), tweet me (either @JonSHarvey or @CllrJonSHarvey) or text or phone me (details here). I don't mind how.

In return, I promise to publish the survey results here as soon as I have a substantive pool of replies to make that worthwhile.

Now to the questions:

1) What existing technology (that you have come across) would, with substantial investment, be an extraordinarily cost effective way of improving community safety / crime reduction?

2) What possible technology (that is just beyond what we currently have) would, with substantial investment, be an extraordinarily cost effective way of improving community safety / crime reduction?

3) What 'sci fi' technology (that is well beyond what we currently have) would, with substantial investment, be an extraordinarily cost effective way of improving community safety / crime reduction?

You may well have more than one answer to each of these questions, but please try to restrict yourself to the best one, in your opinion, for each.

I look forward to reading your answers. Please spread this around to others who you think might also wish to participate.

Thank you!

More tilting at lamp posts...

Thanks to a heads up from Kyle McKay I see that the MoJ have now published an update on the Payment by Results pilots in Doncaster and Peterborough. You can access it here. (My previous blog posts can be accessed here.)

Proving the PbR pilots have worked is still a long way off, it would seem to me: the MoJ concedes they do need full 12 month post release data in order to do a full blown comparison ("final results will not be available until 2014"). However, this does not prevent them from interpreting the results (in my view) creatively to show how PbR is working in these two areas.

However, I would point out the following:

• They say the "interim re-conviction figures being published in this statistical bulletin are based on periods half the length of those that will be used for the final results".  I say this is not just half this is the first half of a 12 month period. Second halves are also a little harder...
• How typical are Doncaster and Peterborough compared to the rest of the country? All the comparisons made are with national data. Given the news about Doncaster in recent months & years, it is hardly a standard place. Also Peterbrough is a 'new town' and (according to Wikipedia) "Peterborough's population grew by 45.4% between 1971 and 1991" which I think makes it a somewhat unusual place. So are national comparisons really valid?
• They say that "Both PbR prison pilots use a 12 month re-conviction measure which differs from the National Statistics proven re-offending measure. The key difference is that re-convictions only count offences for which the offender was convicted at court, whereas the National Statistics proven re-offending measure also includes out of court disposals (cautions)" and "Additionally, there are a number of other differences between the pilots and the National Statistics proven re-offending measure in terms of which offenders are counted within the cohort". That all seems pretty important to me... does it to you?
• Indeed the whole document seems peppered with so many caveats, footnotes and explanations as to make me wonder just what we are being told.
• They say "Success of the Peterborough pilot will be measured against a control group of similar offenders released from other prisons, with the target met if the frequency of re-conviction events is 10 per cent lower for the Peterborough cohort than for the control group. It is not possible to replicate that comparison for these interim figures". I say: why not? Why is the 'control group' not being monitored in a similar way? It does not make it much of a control group..!
• They say "The national comparisons included with the previous interim figures published on 13 June 2013 included all prisons, not just local prisons. However, because Peterborough is a local prison, using national figures for other local prisons provides a better comparison". Huh? Why were the local prison data not used before? Are they just using whatever data seems to give the 'best' result?
• It would appear that frequency of conviction rates in Doncaster have been coming down since September 2007 whereas nationally during the same period, national figures have been showing a rise since September 2007. The Peteborough pilot began in October 2010. At the very least this shows that national comparisons are dodgy since the trends were going in opposite ways before all the PbR pilots began. It also potentially shows that other significant forces are present in Peterborough that could be creating the positive trends other than the PbR pilots... 
• Similarly the Donaster reconviction rates have been in a downward trend since October 2007, the data appears to suggest: again well before the pilots were begun. 
• (As an aside: the national data shows some very worrying trends: reconviction events per 100 offenders has gone from 66 to 84 between June 2007 and 2012. That is a rise of  over 27%. That is a bit concerning isn't it?)
• But for me the biggest problem with this whole comparison approach is that a potentially huge Hawthorne Effect is not being controlled for. In other words, the mere presence and attention being given to the PbR pilots is what is creating any positive effect, not the pilots themselves. This is not, I repeat NOT, being controlled for. For me this calls into question the whole edifice on which these pilots are based.

Anyone with an ounce of independent thought will understand that, at the very least, these results are not the basis which to build a whole reform of the offender management system. The comparisons are shaky and riven with cautions.

It is time to develop a better experimental framework.

British Remote & Online Police Service

I first came across the internet acronym 'irl' many years ago but it was not long after I began living some of my life on line. Part of who I am, my identity exists in the virtual world of the internet. There are large bits of me, as were, held in binary code on a whole variety of servers. Some of this is current, some of this is historical. I have friends on the internet whom I will probably never meet in real life. We exchange greetings. I have been trolled and verbally abused. I have probably made thousands of financial transactions. Last week I initiated court action against a person online. Last night I watched ten minutes of a programme about One Direction's fan base and how they felt connected to their idols in ways that teenage fans of Donny Osmond and David Cassidy could only have dreamt of...

In recent weeks, there have been several tragic stories of young people being driven to suicide by abuse and threats via the internet. No doubt, although much less reported, many hundreds of people will parted with thousands of pounds via various kinds of internet scams. Probably also a fair few (dozens perhaps?) of credit cards will have been stolen, skimmed or cloned and used to pay for all many of items from airline tickets and tube fares. Also sadly some more children will have been groomed and put in danger of abuse. I could go on.

But who polices this virtual world?

Who has the resources not only to tackle such crimes when they occur but also the resources to reduce the risk of such crimes in the future? Who has the ear of the internet industry be they service providers, web designers, cloud managers and all manner of commercial people who make the internet work, so that robust preventative action can be comprehensively taken? What is the internet equivalent of a car immobiliser?

Who is taking a joined up strategic view on all this?

And yes I know we have CEOP and Action Fraud, and probably other units that I do not know about but I do wonder whether we now need a single joined up virtual police service to assemble all these resources together into one centre of excellence? Just like we have the British Transport Police (which in my view ought to look after policing at all airports and sea ports too - but that is another blog post) why do we not have the British Online Police Service?

And to complete the picture as I suspect many of these crimes overlap, I have added in the idea of 'remote' crime which would include in my book rogue phone calls and mail order scams (etc.) which also cause huge distress.

And so I arrive at the idea of the British  Remote & Online Police Service as a new legal entity, probably with new enforcement powers, a governance structure that includes the internet industry (similar to BTP) and clear partnership liaison with 'irl' police services and financial regulators. In these straightened times this will need some imaginative sources of funding (a broad band / junk mail tax perhaps?) to ensure it is adequately resourced.

Can I interest one of the major political parties in this idea in time for the next election? Or even sooner perhaps...?

'Light touch' police and crime panels must shift scrutiny powers up a gear

Yesterday, The Guardian Public Leaders Network published my article about how Police & Crime Panels need to shift up a gear or three in their scrutiny of PCCs, especially their decisions about scarce resource allocation. You can read the whole article here.

In the article I say:

The question is, how well the police and crime panels (PCPs) will scrutinise these resource decisions over the coming months. Chief constables will be using all their considerable skills to ensure good and professional decisions are made about the operational deployment of tight police resources but they will be subject to the policy influence of their PCCs – and that influence needs to be carefully unpicked by the PCPs...

So how is your PCP doing..? 

The politics of stats, trends & probability

I am no statistical expert and it is many years since I studied the application of Student’s T test, two tails and correlation coefficients to psychological experiments. But I have retained just about enough of what I learnt then and since (about targets, trend analysis and statistical process control) to be pretty darn fed up with how most politicians and members of the media treat data.

The ridiculous way in which the media and certain sections of the government are treating the results of Dr Bruce Keogh’s investigation into hospital care is an object lesson in how complex data sets are twisted into political rhetoric. Some of this is clearly about politics and for that I can almost forgive them. But when it comes to the proportion of this twisting that is down to plain ordinary ignorance, I really can’t!

(And if you want to know what I mean about the Keogh report, read this blog post and please read it carefully.)

We entrust politicians with a huge amount of power which they wield on our behalf. They spend vast amounts of money, our money, on projects which the evidence shows (if they looked closely) were never going to work. It is time this ended. All politicians ought to have a good introduction to stats, trends and probability (and scientific methods, while they are about it) so that they are better able to make decisions that will actually make a real difference.

Now I am not saying that all politicians and members of the media are ignorant of such matters, but many are. The information on Payment by Results that I have uncovered in the last few days disturbs me. In fact it horrifies me that we may well be paying service providers for results that could simply be chance results rather than the robust outcomes of a better service.

I do not intend to make this blog post a long lesson in stats. Other people can do that far better than me. But here is just one idea: if you were to throw a dice a couple of dozen times, you would expect the numbers to come up in reasonably even quantities. Perhaps the four might have come up 5 times and the three just once. But you would not presume the dice was loaded. However, if you threw the dice a hundred times and the three only came up (say) 5 times and the four came up (say) 26 times you would begin to think something odd was happening.

Stats is simply about measuring when the threshold between chance and a real variation (a loaded dice in this example) is crossed. Without statistics, you cannot know whether an occurrence of (say) less teenage pregnancy (etc. etc.) is just a random chance or that something ‘significant’ has happened (i.e. it is NOT chance, or at least very unlikely to be).

I would hope that most people reading this, get this. But do most politicians? And journalists? What do you think?

And I won’t even start to talk about about systems theory, the role of blame and the fact that complex things really are complex!! (I will leave that for another blog post.)

But please… please can we have less of the ignorance around trends, evidence and chance occurrences and a bit more understanding that ‘wicked’ social (and medical) problems require some pretty darn ‘wicked’ solutions…

Tilting at lamposts

Yesterday I received a response to my inquiries concerning the pilot data being used by the MoJ to support the extension of  Payment by Results. I have reprinted the letter I received in the blog post below.

This blog contains some commentary on the replies I received.

• The Moj used Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act to not answer two of my questions. They say that the information I was seeking is about to be published on July 25. I am prepared to wait until then before deciding to appeal their reply or not.
• I asked why they published the results early, they said they did this "to ensure the information was made public as soon as it was available" despite admitting in other answers that it was incomplete. I suspect they wanted to get in some 'good news' before the summer vacation and in advance of CSR negotiations. But in my view, it looks shoddy and is evidence of using data and stats for political purposes. However, I guess all governments do that... don't they?
• Their answers do seem to assert that they have sought to compare like with like in terms of cohort comparisons.
• Their answer to question 4 does evidence the fact that this data is incomplete and premature, in my view
• They originally said that a key difference between the cohort is that in this group "reconvictions only count offences for which the offender was convicted at court, whereas the National Statistics proven re-offending measure also includes out of court disposals (cautions)”. I asked what the impact of that difference was likely to be. They referred me to "Table B3 of annex B from the MoJ’s proven re-offending statistics quarterly bulletin: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proven-re-offending--2". I have looked at this table and it is not entirely clear so I think I am going to have go back to them on this and seek further clarification. But do note that they said "We have not produced alternative interim figures on what the impact would be if different rules (such as including cautions) had applied". Which seems a bit sloppy to me. This is a critical difference after all and I suspect that if the data was showing not in favour of the pilot providers, they would be seeking further clarification!
• I asked whether the comparison groups (to evidence that the pilot intervention was in fact working) were selected using some kind of randomised selection. They said "The control group will be selected by an Independent Assessor using Propensity Score Matching (PSM), the methodology for which has been published at: Peterborough Social Impact Bond: an independent ... - Gov.uk" So the answer is 'NO': comparator groups will be selected by 'independent' assessor (being paid by the government, I assume). I looked the reference document and here is a quote from it: "It should be noted that, unlike random control allocation, PSM cannot take account of unmeasured differences which may account for variation in reconviction aside from ‘treatment received’" Uh huh. But it goes onto assert that: "However, PSM [propensity score matching] is widely regarded as one of the best ways of matching quasi-experimentally (Rosenbaum, 2002), and it has been increasingly used in a criminological context (e.g. Wermink et al., 2010)." So that is alright then. Excuse me while I give you this new medicine that has been quasi-experimentally tested on people who are sort of similar to you...
• I asked "For Doncaster, success “will be determined by comparison with the reconviction rate in the baseline year of 2009”. How will this accommodate national and/or local trends in (say) sentencing practice or levels of crime?". They replied "The five percentage point reduction target was agreed after analysis of historic reconviction rates established that this would illustrate a demonstrable difference which could be attributed to the new system and not just natural variation." That is not an answer to my question, I will need to go back to them on this.
• I asked about the 6 versus 12 month comparison and how the headline data (based on six months) was going to look against the usual (12 month) data. They said in reply "The statistical notice made clear the limitations of the information presented and the care that should be taken in interpreting these interim figures." Remind me - was that subtlety in the press releases that went out when this interim data was released...?
• They missed the point completely on my question about seasonality...
• Please read their answer to my question about why 19 month data. Please let me know what you think. I am thinking 'wool', 'eyes' and 'what do you really mean?!'
• The maths question is funny. They said "The figures presented were the rounded versions of the actual figures, which were 68.53 and 79.29". So I have done the calculations again and the result I get this time is 15.7. So they are sort of correct - but why leave out the first decimal point?
• I asked about statistical significance (the test of whether a difference is just a chance difference or one that indicates a real effect is in play). This is what they said "We have not carried out statistical significance tests on the interim figures because, when it comes to the final results, neither pilot will be assessed on the basis of whether they have achieved a statistically significant change."

OK. Let me repeat that again in big and bold:

We have not carried out statistical significance tests on the interim figures because, when it comes to the final results, neither pilot will be assessed on the basis of whether they have achieved a statistically significant change.

So, Payment by Results could well be based upon purely random chance events that may just have happened.

Is that a solid basis for the distribution of taxpayers' money?

Payment by Results, lamp posts... lit?

The day after #tagginggate you would expect me to be somewhat sceptical about how well government manages complex contracts with external suppliers. Moreover, of course, questions remain about how well the external suppliers manage these contracts too! But that is for another blog post one day.

But meanwhile, I received a reply to my questions about the Payment by Results pilots (and if you thought tagging contacts were complex...!). Below I have reprinted in full the reply I have received from the relevant person in the Ministry of Justice. It is already quite a long piece, so I will leave my commentary to another posting. Please read what they have to say critically - you will be able to then to see whether your thoughts match, contradict or add to my interpretations.

Dear Mr Harvey,

Thank you for your email of 13th June 2013, in which you asked for the following information from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ):

(I have left out their repetition of the questions - as they are shown below anyway)

I can confirm that the department holds information that you have asked for, however, please be aware that questions 15 and 16 of your request [these are the questions in question: 15. Given that you must have the data for Peterborough for the missing 19 month period (September 08 to March 11), and acknowledging that this overlaps with the pilot beginning, please could I have this data nonetheless.
16. Likewise, please could I have the data for the quarter beginning April 2012] have been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the remaining questions have been dealt with as normal business.  

Section 84 of the Act states that in order for a request for information to be handled as a Freedom of Information request, it must be for recorded information. For example, a Freedom of Information request would be for a copy of an HR policy, rather than an explanation as to why we have that policy in place. 

Following our assessment of your correspondence we believe that questions 1-14 and 17-21 relate to general questions and not recorded information.

The responses are as follows:

Questions 15 and 16 – Dealt with under the FOIA

I can confirm that the department holds information that you have asked for, but it is exempt from disclosure because it is intended for future publication.

We are not obliged to provide information that is intended for future publication (section 22 of the Act). In line with the terms of this exemption in the Freedom of Information Act, we have considered whether it would be in the public interest for us to provide you with the information ahead of publication, despite the exemption being applicable. In this case, I have concluded that the public interest favours withholding the information.

You can find out more about Section 22 by reading the extract from the Act and some guidance points we consider when applying this exemption, attached at the end of this letter.

You can also find more information by reading the full text of the Act, available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/22.

When assessing whether or not it was in the public interest to disclose the information to you, we took into account the following factors:

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure
• There are public arguments in favour of disclosure of this information at the present time.  Disclosure would for example improve transparency in the operations of Government, and of the justice system in particular.

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information
• There are public interest arguments against disclosure of this information at the present time.  These arguments include that is in the public interest to adhere to the existing publication process for official statistics, which includes time for the data to be collated and properly verified.

• It is also in the public interest to ensure that the publication of official information is a properly planned and managed process, to ensure that data are accurate once it is placed into the public domain.  It is also in the public interest to ensure that the information is available to all members of the public at the same time, and premature publication could undermine the principle of making the information available to all at the same time through the official publication process.

We reached the view that, on balance, the public interest is better served by withholding this information under Section 22 of the Act at this time.

You may be interested to know that this information is due to be published in the MoJ’s Proven Re-offending Statistics Quarterly bulletin on 25th July 2013 at the following link: 

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/series/reoffending-statistics

[It seems reasonable to wait until 25/7/13 to decide whether I will appeal this decision or not.]

Questions 1-14 and 17-21 – Dealt with as normal business

As mentioned above, we have dealt with these questions under the provision of normal business.

1.  The pilots began on 9 September 2010 and the 1 October 2011 (Peterborough and Doncaster respectively.) Please can you qualify “began”?

This means that each pilot included eligible offenders (as defined in Table A1, Annex A of the statistical notice) discharged from the pilot prison from these dates onwards. 

2. Given that “the next Proven Reoffending Statistics quarterly bulletin will not be published until 25 July 2013”, why did you publish your results today rather than a few weeks from now?

As set out in the publication, rather than wait until 25 July, the results were published in this ad-hoc bulletin to ensure the information was made public as soon as it was available. In accordance with the Official Statistics Code of Practice the publication date was pre-announced by MoJ statisticians in May 2013. The next Proven Re-offending Statistics quarterly bulletin on 25 July will contain updated interim figures for the pilots, with quarterly updates thereafter.  

3. I understand that “the interim re-conviction figures being published in this statistical bulletin are based on periods half the length of those that will be used for the final results” – daft question I am sure, but presumably this applies to both the ‘experimental’ subject averages and the national comparators?

Yes, the interim re-conviction figures presented in this publication have been produced in exactly the same way for each pilot prison and its national comparator.

4. You say that these “interim 6 month re-conviction figures are available for almost all of Peterborough cohort 1 (around 850 offenders) and half of Doncaster cohort 1 (around 700 offenders)”, please can you explain what has happened to the other portions of the cohorts and why they are included?

The interim figures have been provided for as much of each cohort as possible, but at this stage they do not include all offenders in cohort 1 of either pilot. This is because some offenders were released from prison too recently to be measured on this basis (the 6 month re-offending window and 3 month waiting period have not yet elapsed). However, they will be included in the interim figures in future as soon as enough time has elapsed to allow us to measure them on a consistent basis.

5. In terms of methodology, you say “offenders enter the PbR pilots after their first eligible release from the prison within the cohort period”, please can you explain “eligible” in this context and whether the national comparator figures also cover the same “eligible” group?

Not all offenders released from the pilot prisons are eligible for the pilots. The Peterborough pilot for example, only includes adult males released from a custodial sentence of less than 12 months, so a prisoner released from a sentence of 2 years would not be eligible.  For each pilot, the national comparator figures have been produced on the same basis using the same eligibility criteria. More details on eligibility are available in Table A1, Annex A of the interim re-conviction figures publication:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/interim-re-conviction-figures-for-the-peterborough-and-doncaster-payment-by-results-pilots

6. You explain that the key difference is that reconvictions only count offences for which the offender was convicted at court, whereas the National Statistics proven re-offending measure also includes out of court disposals (cautions)” and “Additionally, there are a number of other differences between the pilots and the 
7. National Statistics proven re-offending measure in terms of which offenders are counted within the cohort”. Are you able to say what difference these differences might make to the figures? For example, what number of offenders per hundred are usually subject to a caution (or similar disposal) as opposed to a court conviction?

We have not produced alternative interim figures on what the impact would be if different rules (such as including cautions) had applied. However for information on the effect cautions have on re-offending, please see Table B3 of annex B from the MoJ’s proven re-offending statistics quarterly bulletin:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proven-re-offending--2

8. Again I assume that given that the “Peterborough pilot includes offenders released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months, whereas the Doncaster pilot includes all offenders released from custody regardless of sentence length”, the national comparisons are on a like for like basis?

Yes, the figures for the national comparisons are calculated on the same basis as their respective pilots.

9. You explain that the “success of each Peterborough cohort will be determined by comparison with a control group (of comparable offenders from across the country)”. How will this ‘control’ group be selected to ensure there is no inadvertent or unknown bias? Indeed was there (will there be) any form of randomised control trial element to either of these two trials (and extensions)? If not, what is your considered professional judgement as a statistician as to the validity of these results to guide future practice?

The control group will be selected by an Independent Assessor using Propensity Score Matching (PSM), the methodology for which has been published at:

Peterborough Social Impact Bond: an independent ... - Gov.uk

10. For Doncaster, success “will be determined by comparison with the reconviction rate in the baseline year of 2009”. How will this accommodate national and/or local trends in (say) sentencing practice or levels of crime?

The five percentage point reduction target was agreed after analysis of historic reconviction rates established that this would illustrate a demonstrable difference which could be attributed to the new system and not just natural variation.

11. Given that normally reconviction rates are measured on a 12 month basis and these interim results are measured on a 6 month one, how much is that likely (based on past data) to have depressed the reconviction rates?

The figures presented are our best assessment of change in re-conviction figures at this time and have been provided as an early indication of each pilot’s progress. It is not possible to say at this stage what the final 12 month re-conviction figures will be, though naturally the final 12 month re-conviction figures will be higher than the interim 6 month figures simply because offenders will have had more time in which to commit offences.  The statistical notice made clear the limitations of the information presented and the care that should be taken in interpreting these interim figures. 

12. You say “Whereas in this publication, to eliminate the risk of seasonality and enable a consistent comparison over time, all figures relate to offenders released in the 6 month period from October to March”. I may well be missing something here, but by only using the six winter months, are you not likely to increase the risk of a seasonal effect in the data? Please explain further. 

We would be risking a seasonal effect if we took the 6 winter months for the pilot period and compared them to a different period in other years. For example if we had compared October 11 to March 12 with January to June 2009, it would be possible that any changes were simply the result of seasonal effects rather than a real change in re-offending. Whereas by only comparing the Oct-Mar pilot period with other Oct-Mar periods, we are comparing like with like and have therefore eliminated the risk of seasonality 

13. Given that the Peterborough cohort finished on 1/7/12, and allowing for the 6 months plus 3 (for court delays), this takes us up to March 2013. So on this basis, why have the last three months of data (April, May and June 2012) been excluded? (As far as I can see there is no explanation of this decision, but forgive me if I have overlooked it.)

Before releasing official statistics the information needs to be collated, processed and quality assured. Re-conviction data for offenders discharged in April, May and June for the Peterborough pilot had not been fully collated, processed and quality assured in time for this publication. However, re-conviction figures for the full Peterborough cohort (including all releases up to the end of June 2012) will be included in the next quarterly update to be published in July. 

14. Given that I assume that data is ordinarily collected on a quarterly basis, it would have been helpful to have presented your data in a similar way so that trends could be spotted over time rather than use the fairly arbitrary 19 month period to show the data. Why did you present it this way? Please could I have the data on a quarterly basis.

The 19 month period was chosen as this shows figures for as much of the cohort as possible as explained in the statistical notice. It is not an arbitrary cut off, but simply the period of the cohort for which we were able to provide interim re-conviction figures. 

The interim figures were published as soon as the MoJ Chief Statistician judged that we were in a position to produce statistically robust interim re-conviction figures, meaning that the number of offenders being reported on was a large enough sample for each pilot.  We have not produced any figures based on quarterly cohorts because the numbers involved would be too small to give statistically robust information. 

Additionally, reporting on the cohort by quarter would not show a like for like comparison across each quarter, and would therefore be more likely to confuse than to provide meaningful information. The reason for this is that offenders join the cohort after their first eligible discharge within the period. However some offenders will be released from the prison more than once within the cohort period. These more prolific offenders (who are more likely to re-offend) would therefore be more likely to appear in earlier quarters than later quarters.

15. Given that you must have the data for Peterborough for the missing 19 month period (September 08 to March 11), and acknowledging that this overlaps with the pilot beginning, please could I have this data nonetheless.

See earlier response.

16. Likewise, please could I have the data for the quarter beginning April 2012.

See earlier response.

17. You say “Nationally the equivalent figures show a rise of 16% from 69 to 79 re-conviction events per 100 offenders”. How do you get 16%? I can see a rise of 10 ‘points’ or a rise of (10/69*100) 14.5%. 

The figures presented were the rounded versions of the actual figures, which were 68.53 and 79.29. 

18. (As an aside, this is quite a large rise nationally in re-conviction rates comparing the period from just before the last election to period after. Have national rates continued to rise or have they levelled off now?)

Re-offending rates for all adult offenders have barely changed in a decade. Please see the quarterly re-offending bulletin for information on national re-offending levels.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proven-re-offending--2

19. You say “these interim figures show a fall in the frequency of re-conviction events at Peterborough” which is drop from 41.6% to 39.2%. At what threshold of probability is this statistically significant?

We have not carried out statistical significance tests on the interim figures because, when it comes to the final results, neither pilot will be assessed on the basis of whether they have achieved a statistically significant change.  Peterborough will be assessed by comparison with a national matched control group using a PSM methodology. Doncaster will be assessed against a baseline of calendar year 2009.  

20. Please can you confirm that the OGRS scores cited relate to the cohort groups in both Peterborough and Doncaster (rather than all offenders who were released)?

The OGRS scores relate to the offenders within each cohort.

21. Why are the national re-conviction scores given next to Doncaster data (which average 32.9%) differ from the scores given next to the Peterborough data (average 37.9%)? I now the period is different and there is some missing data, but this still seems like a large difference…

The criteria used to create the national comparator figures for the Peterborough and Doncaster prisons are different because the 2 pilots have different criteria. For example, the national figures for the Peterborough comparison will only include adult males released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months, whereas the Doncaster comparison includes all prisoners released from custody regardless of sentence length. For more information on the differences between the two pilots please see Table A1, Annex A of the interim re-conviction figures statistical notice.

Generally, re-conviction rates are higher for offenders released from custodial sentences of less than a 12 months than for all offenders released from prison.  Hence the national comparator group for Peterborough have higher re-conviction rates than the national comparator group for Doncaster. 

You have the right to appeal our decision if you think it is incorrect. Details can be found in the ‘How to Appeal’ section attached at the end of this letter.

I will stop there - the rest is pretty standard boilerplate about how to appeal etc. I will say thank you to the Justice Statistics Analytical Services (who signed the letter) for their work in responding to my challenges.

So what do you think about these answers to my questions? 
What would you comment upon? 

The new NHS: in one easy to understand vid

Twitter is awash with links to this video on the Kings Fund website explaining how the new NHS will be working.

You can access the video here.

I am posting this for a couple of reasons. Firstly it is a very helpful video and it will explain to you how the new NHS will be working. (It is still complex by the way!) Anyone who wants to know about such matters... go watch the video!

Secondly, and probably most importantly for me right now: my daughter, Jess Harvey, project managed the video! She works with an extraordinary outfit called Creative Connection who make lots of these kinds of videos for a whole range of people. 

So congrats to The Kings Fund for commissioning this piece, Creative Connection for having such a fab team of people and, of course, my daughter Jess who brought the video all together.

Yey! (From a very proud Dad)

SME friendly procurement: a radical tool

For over two years I have been an active member of the Cabinet Office's SME Panel. The other members come from a wide range of businesses including software development, travel agency services and food supply. We have met about eight times as a full panel and there have been several sub groups meeting at more regular intervals.

The Panel began following a summit hosted by the Prime Minister and Francis Maude. I am still unclear as to how I was invited along to the original summit and thence to the panel. Perhaps it was down to my humorous rant against the excesses of some procurement approaches or the fact that I dared to challenge David Cameron at the summit about the scandal of battlefield soldiers being isolated in tanks which are not adequately equipped for the real situation, because those soldiers had no input to the procurement process. We need 'whole system procurement'.

One of the pieces of work of the panel that I became closely involved with was the creation of an 'SME friendly' tool, designed to change government and public procurement forever.

This tool has now (finally!) been uploaded to the Cabinet Office website and I can proudly (and publicly) tell you more about it. You can access the tool here. The tool has been trialed  in a number of central government departments and thence refined into the version on the net. The Cabinet Office have informed the SME Panel that its use is now growing across Whitehall and beyond.

I regard it as a positive sign that the Government does mean business about reforming procurement and is still persuaded that leveling the playing field so that more SMEs can bid for government contracts is valuable.

There are some of my colleagues on the SME Panel who are very concerned that there are indications that the Cabinet Office has been taking its foot off the pedal a little, of late. They fear what we are seeing is a growth of larger organisations still snaffling (to use a technical term) too much of government business in ways that mean the taxpayers and citizens are losing out (big time). While there does appear to be a belief that if the large primes sub contract their work to SMEs then the taxpayer will still reap the big rewards of lower spend and more innovation (which is largely not the case when you factor in embedded supply chain margins and large prime practices), I am more sanguine.

Changing government and public sector procurement was always going to be a long haul and I am realistic enough to know that there are many deep vested interests in maintaining the status quo. I am also aware there are many practices ensconced in public procurement departments that unwittingly favour contracting with larger suppliers. (If you are a public sector professional and you want someone to come in and help you uncover these practices and change them... just get in touch!)

In sum, I am hugely proud of the efforts that the small team, of which I was a part, put into creating the 'SME friendly tool'. Within this self assessment tool, there is hope for not only fairer procurement processes but critically also processes that result in lower costs, more innovation, better outcomes and investment in growing business in the country.

What other government tools can achieve all that?!

Quick fix, stay fix and the art of getting more from less

I have just uploaded a couple of videos to youtube (parts one and two) where I talk through a model that I have been explaining for many years (with live hand drawing!). The model is grounded in total quality management and continuous improvement (which is where I began my consultancy career).

It is not a complicated model. However many people have told me that it has really helped them to understand the significant challenges faced my them as leaders, in trying to get more from less.

Resources are very tight and demands are even greater: whether you work in the public, voluntary or commercial sectors. The need for organisations to work more elegantly has never been greater.

So please, have a look at the videos and let me know what you think. You can find them here: (Part One & Part Two)

I have also written about this model here too, if reading is more your style.

Payment by Results and lamp posts

Many years ago at school, I studied SMP Maths. I always remember the cartoon at the front of the chapter on statistics. It showed a drunken man leaning against a lamp post. The caption read: some people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post, for support rather than illumination.

And so yesterday, the Ministry of Justice published

Statistical Notice: Interim re-conviction figures for the Peterborough and Doncaster Payment by Results pilots

I was drawn towards this document by a combination of Russell Webster's excellent blog and the BBC news at midday. It kind got up my gander a little bit as it seemed to be exercise in political punditry rather than a clear analysis of whether the new Payment by Results regime may actually be working (or not). With my gander raised, I emailed the statistician involved with a number of questions which I reprint below.

The questions are a bit geeky, I know. But I do think it is vital for us all to know the precise evidence for whether PbR can work or not. Feel free of course to comment or indeed write with your own questions too.
________________________

Dear Mike Elkins

I have just read through your publication. I have a number of questions and I would be most grateful for your thoughts:

1.       The pilots began on 9 September 2010 and the 1 October 2011 (Peterborough and Doncaster respectively.) Please can you qualify “began”?
2.       Given that “the next Proven Reoffending Statistics quarterly bulletin will not be published until 25 July 2013”, why did you publish your results today rather than a few weeks from now?
3.       I understand that “the interim re-conviction figures being published in this statistical bulletin are based on periods half the length of those that will be used for the final results” – daft question I am sure, but presumably this applies to both the ‘experimental’ subject averages and the national comparators?
4.       You say that these “interim 6 month re-conviction figures are available for almost all of Peterborough cohort 1 (around 850 offenders) and half of Doncaster cohort 1 (around 700 offenders)”, please can you explain what has happened to the other portions of the cohorts and why they are included?
5.       In terms of methodology, you say “offenders enter the PbR pilots after their first eligible release from the prison within the cohort period”, please can you explain “eligible” in this context and whether the national comparator figures also cover the same “eligible” group?
6.       You explain that the key difference is that reconvictions only count offences for which the offender was convicted at court, whereas the National Statistics proven re-offending measure also includes out of court disposals (cautions)” and “Additionally, there are a number of other differences between the pilots and the
7.       National Statistics proven re-offending measure in terms of which offenders are counted within the cohort”. Are you able to say what difference these differences might make to the figures? For example, what number of offenders per hundred are usually subject to a caution (or similar disposal) as opposed to a court conviction?
8.       Again I assume that given that the “Peterborough pilot includes offenders released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months, whereas the Doncaster pilot includes all offenders released from custody regardless of sentence length”, the national comparisons are on a like for like basis?
9.       You explain that the “success of each Peterborough cohort will be determined by comparison with a control group (of comparable offenders from across the country)”. How will this ‘control’ group be selected to ensure there is no inadvertent or unknown bias? Indeed was there (will there be) any form of randomised control trial element to either of these two trials (and extensions)? If not, what is your considered professional judgement as a statistician as to the validity of these results to guide future practice?
10.   For Doncaster, success “will be determined by comparison with the reconviction rate in the baseline year of 2009”. How will this accommodate national and/or local trends in (say) sentencing practice or levels of crime?
11.   Given that normally reconviction rates are measured on a 12 month basis and these interim results are measured on a 6 month one, how much is that likely (based on past data) to have depressed the reconviction rates?
12.   You say “Whereas in this publication, to eliminate the risk of seasonality and enable a consistent comparison over time, all figures relate to offenders released in the 6 month period from October to March”. I may well be missing something here, but by only using the six winter months, are you not likely to increase the risk of a seasonal effect in the data? Please explain further.
13.   Given that the Peterborough cohort finished on 1/7/12, and allowing for the 6 months plus 3 (for court delays), this takes us up to March 2013. So on this basis, why have the last three months of data (April, May and June 2012) been excluded? (As far as I can see there is no explanation of this decision, but forgive me if I have overlooked it.)
14.   Given that I assume that data is ordinarily collected on a quarterly basis, it would have been helpful to have presented your data in a similar way so that trends could be spotted over time rather than use the fairly arbitrary 19 month period to show the data. Why did you present it this way? Please could I have the data on a quarterly basis.
15.   Given that you must have the data for Peterborough for the missing 19 month period (September 08 to March 11), and acknowledging that this overlaps with the pilot beginning, please could I have this data nonetheless.
16.   Likewise, please could I have the data for the quarter beginning April 2012.
17.   You say “Nationally the equivalent figures show a rise of 16% from 69 to 79 re-conviction events per 100 offenders”. How do you get 16%? I can see a rise of 10 ‘points’ or a rise of (10/69*100) 14.5%.
18.   (As an aside, this is quite a large rise nationally in re-conviction rates comparing the period from just before the last election to period after. Have national rates continued to rise or have they levelled off now?)
19.   You say “these interim figures show a fall in the frequency of re-conviction events at Peterborough” which is drop from 41.6% to 39.2%. At what threshold of probability is this statistically significant?
20.   Please can you confirm that the OGRS scores cited relate to the cohort groups in both Peterborough and Doncaster (rather than all offenders who were released)?
21.   Why are the national re-conviction scores given next to Doncaster data (which average 32.9%) differ from the scores given next to the Peterborough data (average 37.9%)? I know the period is different and there is some missing data, but this still seems like a large difference…

I look forward to your thoughts

Many thanks

________________________

And now I wait...

UPDATE: FoI inquiry has been acknowledged. 20 working days or less to go... (140613)

Digital local services: the zero challenge!

Recently, I had the great pleasure of facilitating a vibrant symposium on how to harness the power of digital in the delivery of local services - so that there can be more effectiveness, efficiency and economy.

The day was one of series organised by ITW. If you are not already signed up to be part of this network (or the several others that ITW have put together...) what is stopping you? It is free for people from the public sector, and becoming a private sector partner is well worth your investment.

It was also a delight to work alongside my daughter, Jess on that day too. She took the answers to three 'zero challenge'* questions and turned them into a themed visual presentation. The questions were:

• What must we learn from the past: what should we now stop, start and carry on doing?
• If the future is nothing else, we must make sure that it… what?
• In order to sweat our existing assets and capacity, we really should… what?

And this is what Jess produced.

(I have also uploaded a 7Mb version of this to my google drive, if you want to access that.) 

I may be biased of course, but I think this picture neatly and beautifully summarises many of the challenges ahead as local services grapple with how to make digital working far more than just uploading existing forms onto the net (!)

So if you are a public sector person looking to network around some core issues, you can contact ITW here. And if you are from the private sector, please get in touch via this page. And if you looking for a Visual Communication Artist, Photographer & Project Manager then you can contact Jess via this email contact.

*Re 'zero challenge': this is something I have designed to fit into a day which is already jam packed with inputs & workshops. It provides a still moment of reflection, prompted by some critical questions designed to generate some useful insights from the participants at the very outset. It also helps the participants focus in on the day itself. 

The vital role of PCCs in preventing crime

Since Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) have an emerging vital role in crime prevention (not just reduction) – I thought I would dig out the impressive work of Professor Paul Ekblom.

Professor Ekblom can be found residing here: http://www.designagainstcrime.com/ where he promotes his work to reduce and prevent crime. I first came across his work when he was at the Home Office and I remain hugely impressed by his “Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity” model which I think provokes much good thought leading towards actions to be taken to prevent and reduce crime.

Using his model as a prompt, there is much that the best PCCs will be able to do to reduce and prevent crime through the powers that they will have and the leadership influence they will bring:

• Given that the potential offenders must first have a predisposition for crime (criminality), the PCC will be able to engage with a range of public agencies to coordinate and focus early intervention and progressive actions with communities (and perhaps even individual families) where criminality is at its highest. 
• Offenders usually lack resources to avoid crime (such as ability to restrain impulses, exercise social skills and gain a legitimate living). The PCC has a role here to support programmes which assist known offenders get out of the cycle of criminal behaviour through skills training, supporting apprenticeships as part of Police procurement and so forth. 
• People who commit crimes are by definition ready to offend (e.g. motivated by boredom, shortage of money or need for drugs, being in a conflicting relationship, being in a particular emotional state). Disrupting these motivations is therefore critical. While many of these motivations are very personal and ephemeral, a PCC can support drugs rehab programmes and even Relate in its efforts to help people maintain stable relationships. (I have often joked that the National Offender Management System should run a free online dating agency since one of the most effective factors in reducing crime is being in a fun, loving and stable relationship where you have much to lose.. or am I joking?) 
• And then there are the resources for crime (the skills, inside knowledge, criminal contacts, tools, weapons etc). All the evidence points towards those who get mixed up in the criminal justice systems stay mixed up in it – for a whole array of reasons. One of these reasons is that people get more resources to commit crime in the future. This has got to change. Whilst I am not advocating the solitary confinement of Victorian gaols where it was believed that criminals could ‘catch’ criminality from breathing others’ air (see pic below of the old Lincoln Prison chapel), I am saying let’s keep people out of gaol as much as possible. New PCCs will have much to learn from (say) the experience of transformation of New York City where a recent article reviewing a new book stated: Much greater use was made of alternatives to incarceration, such as community sentences and residential drug treatment, as well as “drug courts” and other non-traditional ways of hearing cases. 
• In one of my previous occupations, I was a health education officer. At the Oxfordshire Health Unit where I worked, we used the Health Belief Model as a source of inspiration for much of our activity. In a similar vein, the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity model uses the idea that offenders calculate whether the risk & effort is outweighed by the scale & likelihood of reward. PCCs can act to boost the perceptions that risk and effort are high and rewards low by (for example) entering into a dialogue with local media to increase the perception that offenders will get caught and their rewards will be confiscated. 
• I am not sure what a PCC can do about offenders needing to be present in the situation whereby an offender can commit a crime, other than ensuring that all efforts are taken to keep known past offenders busy with other stuff. Idle hands an all that. The provision of good youth services (being myopically and cynically cut by many local Tory authorities when they calculate that many young people can’t or won’t vote) is a must naturally, as are projects mentioned above. 
• But there is much that PCCs can do to ensure that crime preventers (as Ekblom calls then) are present, capable and credible by adequately funding the police service in terms of numbers and skills development. Moreover, these preventers can be anyone with a formal crime prevention responsibility (police, community safety staff, concierges) or an informal one (residents, parents, teachers or employees in general). This means that PCCs should be supporting other projects designed to support this second category by acting to criticise politically short sighted cuts in (say) caretakers for sheltered housing places. These criminal event preventers can reduce the likelihood of crimes being committed by shaping the situation (e.g. by locking doors) or influencing the offender (e.g. by applying social pressure not to steal). They can intervene during the event (defending themselves or their property, or that of others) or react after it. The preventers’ potential to intervene and react can influence the current crime event through the offender’s anticipation (‘Will the victim or passers-by overpower me? Will I be identified to the police?’). It can also influence the next event by the action taken (e.g. victims securing their house against repeat burglary, or reporting to the police to initiate detection, criminal proceedings and punishment). (Italics are mostly Ekblom quotes above, by the way) 
• Just as there are crime preventers, there are also crime promoters who by contrast increase the likelihood of a criminal event by careless or provocative behaviour or more practical contributions such as supplying weapons or buying stolen goods. The PCC support for effective police action to disrupt such networks is obvious. 
• Targets of crime may be human, physical property, data, environmental or service-related. Targets must be attractive and vulnerable. PCCs can use their leadership to help people understand what action they can take (as individuals, as partner agencies, as businesses etc.) to reduce vulnerability and attractiveness. Locking bikes and keeping expensive mobile phones out of sight come to mind. PCCs can sponsor gating projects to make access to homes less easy. Thicker walls between flats can reduce noise disruption and violence which can follow. Again PCCs have a role here in influencing planning authorities and housing developers. 

This is just a sample of what Ekblom’s model can do to inform and support what PCCs can and must do to prevent and reduce crime. The trick will be prioritising the range of possibilities so that each PCC uses their time and resources to maximum effect.

What would be your priorities?

(If you visit Lincoln, the old prison is well worth exploring for its fascinating focus on air conditionning and keeping prisoners apart from each other - the prison is more or less preserved in aspic..)

All in the mind? (Is social media helping reduce the fear of crime, or not?)

What I want to focus on in this blog is whether social media (in all of its forms) is helping to reduce the problem of the fear of crime. But first some background:

While the Crime & Disorder Act 1998 was in committee stages, I mounted a one-man campaign to have reducing not just actual crime & disorder as the aim for local community safety partnerships but also the fear of crime & disorder written in as a statutory aim. I did not succeed but I still wonder how the UK would be different had my campaign been successful.

For we still have a significant gap between the public’s experience of crime and their fear of it. As an excellent article in the Guardian last week pointed out:

Two thirds of respondents to the British Crime Survey (now the Crime Survey for England and Wales, or CSEW) consistently say that they believe crime has increased a little or a lot over the past decade.

Do read the whole article. It has some excellent references and asks some important questions.

Fear of crime is a large problem, in my view, for several reasons including making some people reluctant to leave their homes, the way it twists the debates around policing & crime, and the ways in which certain groups of people are demonised.

But to return to the question: is social media is helping this situation or not. (I guess I fear that it could be making things worse.) I posed this question last Saturday to a the BlueLightCamp unconference (hastag #ukblc13) and a most useful discussion was had.

(FYI: the camp was a collection of people involved with the emergency services who came together to talk about the use of social media in these areas. It was a great day, by the way! And big thanks to those who came along to the session I ran.)

With that discussion on social media and the fear of crime, I was left with a series of questions:

• How can we design the social media space to reduce the opportunities for fear of crime to be made worse and increase the chances that people will feel safer instead?
• In other words: are there principles from the ‘designing out crime’ practices in the real world that could be imported into the social media space?
• Can the idea that people generally feel more assured, confident and safe if they see a uniformed officer in their community (and I know this is up for hot debate), be applied to social media – a sort of virtual 'hi-vis' police presence?
• How much is known about the full impact of police tweeting, blogging etc: are people now better informed and assured or are the public now even more fearful? (Has any research been done on this?)
• Are there ways of putting messages out there that will narrow the gap between the perceived and actual incidence of crime and disorder (and ways that make the gap bigger?)
• Is some policing social media unwittingly making things worse for the public?
• If we take the view that much of the mainstream traditional media still focus on crime reporting that magnifies fear, how should the social media protagonists in the policing world respond?
• Although I am not suggesting that the fear of crime can drive people to suicide (can it?), in the ‘real world’ there are signs put up on (say) Clifton Suspension Bridge and at the ends of station platforms offering people help. Is there a social media equivalent that could help people reduce any distress about the fear of crime?
• Should Neighbourhood Watch organise a social media branch? 
• What do you think might be done? (All ideas welcome!)

It is performance management Jim, but not as we know it

I have read two rather excellent pieces this morning about managing and improving performance in the public services.

First I came across this piece by Mike Ledwidge entitled "Why has it all gone wrong within our public services". It is a bit of a polemical rant containing some ideas that I would not support* but its main thrust that the public services have been failed dismally by politicians and managers who think performance can be managed by measuring outputs is well made. To cite one paragraph (but do read the whole article):

You CANNOT performance measure a ‘complex system’ by outputs. Now if you do not understand EXACTLY what that sentence means let us hope you are not involved in anything to do with the management of our public services. Sadly we now have thousands of senior public servants who think they do know what they are doing with targets and measurement, and clearly they don’t. Complex systems have more than one purpose. If you measure the police on arrests and detections, any prevention they do will muck that up. If you ‘performance measure’ on crime reduction, officers will find ways to not record crimes. The awful tale of the rape unit in Southwark trying to improve their stats is an example of the result of government pressure and targets. 

And then later, @TheCustodySgt pointed me towards an excellent piece by @SimonJGuilfoyle entitled "Panic!"  In his article, Simon uses his long experience of such matters to highlight how managers often lurch into action based on an erroneous understanding of performance variation. Again, please read the piece as it contains a delightful cartoon which makes the point very clearly:

The post is about the unintended consequences that can occur when managers draw erroneous conclusions about data

As regular readers know, this is a subject I have mentioned before in several places. I wrote this recently on another blog which has many links.

So for the uninitiated politician and manager charged with the responsibility of improving public service performance and getting quarts out of pint pots... here are some pointers:

• Achieving social outcomes (the improvements in society that we pay the public services to produce) is mighty complex: don't even think you can boil things to simple linear or transactional 'customer' relationships!
• Everything varies: the weather, leaves in the forest, need for social care and disturbances on drunk Saturday nights...
• But, there are patterns in these variations which need to and can be understood (well mostly): public services need to be resourced and organised around these variations
• Measurements & targets change that which they are measuring and targeting (and not just in the way that a watched pot never boils!)
• As Deming famously said "drive out fear": if your system of performance management contains even a wisp of fear, people will do weird and unexpected things that are not what you intended

I could go on...

But please, just read some work by Deming, Checkland, Ohno or Seddon. And please (please!) stop wasting precious public resources on fluffy, vanity systems of performance management that are mostly "sound and fury signifying nothing!"


* e.g. the comment "At one stage we were 20,000 teachers short, and some have been replaced by people who, like some doctors, are not easy to understand" which is an unnecessary xenophobic swipe, it seems to me

Policing & Crime Plans and frontline discretion

We are nearing the time when all 41 PCCs will have published their Police and Crime Plans. In the months running up to the election of the PCCs, many people expressed concerns that their introduction would lead to political control of what the police services and police officers do. Despite clear statements in the legislation that operational leadership would still rest with the Chief Constable, many people were and probably still remain concerned.

The worry, I assume in part, comes from a belief that the objectives framed by the PCCs for their areas in these forthcoming plans will inevitably affect what police officers and staff do on the ground. There will be many of course, who will believe that such lofty strategic plans are a long way from the 'sharp end' and will make little difference.

With all this in mind, I dug out an extract from a proposal I submitted over a year ago to a police service which wanted to commission some research into how their officers and staff perceived their operational discretion and independence when balanced against their relationship with constabulary  policy, procedures and performance management regime. It looked to be a fascinating piece of work and I was fed up that I did not win it! But such is life!

As part of my submission, I devised a set of questions that could be asked of front line officers to get inside how much their felt their professional discretion and responsibility was compromised and/or supported and/or unaffected by wider policies, objectives and plans etc. Here are those questions:

1. How much individual responsibility do you consider you currently have on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means “I only do what I am instructed to do” and 10 means “I am 100% in control of what decisions I take at work”?
2. Using the same scale, where do you think you ought to be (and it may be the same)?
3. How much accountability do you consider you currently have on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means “I am not held to account for anything that I do or achieve” and 10 means “I am held to account for everything that I do or achieve”?
4. Using the same scale, where do you think you ought to be (and it may be the same)?
5. In your view, how is the fit between what you are responsible for and what you are held to account for? For this the scale is 1 “no fit at all, I am often held to account for that which I am not responsible” through to 10 “I am only held to account for that which I am responsible for”?
6. Using the same scale, where do you think you ought to be (and it may be the same)?
7. Given all of these questions above, what would you say that would add depth and colour to your answers? What evidence, examples or stories do you have to illustrate your views?
8. One summary interpretation of the ‘Oath of Allegiance’ is that you have (within its scope) total independence to do all that you consider necessary to support and maintain the Queen’s Peace. If you think the reality is somewhat different, please tell me how it is different? 
9. Do you have any examples of where you acted in accord with the Oath but independently of force policy and procedures? What are those examples?
10. Are there other examples where you acted dependently upon force procedures but in your view, not in accord with the Oath? What are those examples?
11. What is the difference that makes the difference between those two extremes? How do you determine how much independence (of policy and procedures) you can exercise?
12. On the basis that it is the job of everyone working for the Police to make effective and efficient decisions, what helps you make those kind of decisions?
13. And what gets in the way of making decisions that serve greater effectiveness and efficiency?
14. In your view, what needs to happen so that you can be more confident in your own decision making – and that of your colleagues as well?

So if anyone wants to some more research now - especially into how the new Police and Crime Plans may impact frontline decision making - you are welcome to use these questions as a starter for ten (although an attribution would be lovely).

And if you are a frontline officer / member of staff - and you would like to answer these questions anonymously - please do get in touch. (jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk) I would be interested in your answers!