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This article aims to inform the reader of the developments around integrated offender management (IOM) arrangements with a particular focus on the issues in relation to workforce development and responding to emerging support needs.

The article is designed to take the reader through an IOM development journey, its key principles and some common issues on which the Government departments are supporting local areas.

The article emphasises that integrated offender management should not be seen as a programme or scheme. Rather, it is a locally agreed strategic framework for bringing together different offender‐focused programmes and approaches. It highlights the need for a skilled work force at both strategic and operational levels, in order to mainstream effective and efficient offender management approaches.

A focus on workforce development and training can be expected to help local areas to develop an agreed vision for the local IOM approach and raise awareness of it at all levels, to help to mainstream the approach.

The article highlights the importance of workforce development to the effectiveness of IOM and invites areas to engage with the Home Office.

The purpose of this paper is to outline findings from research into Integrated Offender Management (IOM), an example of multi-agency working between the police, probation and drug treatment services, and how this is expected to be affected by the “Transforming Rehabilitation” (TR) changes to the probation service being introduced by the Ministry of Justice.

The methodological approach was realistic evaluation. The findings of this paper draw upon semi-structured interviews undertaken with IOM staff, offenders and a small number of national IOM portfolio holders. Observations of the operation of IOM in the local site have also been used.

Three underpinning mechanisms within IOM were uncovered during the research, all of which are at risk from the TR changes.

IOM, as it currently operates, will be affected fundamentally by the TR changes, due to the disruption to stable multi-agency working. The research is limited by taking place during the planning and initial roll out of the TR changes; as a result interviewees were commenting on their expectations rather than their direct experience of the changes. However, their experience within IOM makes them well placed to assess the likely impact of TR.

As the TR changes are new, this paper is amongst only a small number seeking to assess their anticipated impact based on primary research.

The development of policy and delivery of interventions in the connected fields of alcohol and criminal justice is a complex area with implications for the single and joined‐up work of a range of agencies working across health, criminal justice and local government. This paper provides an overview of some of the connected health and criminal justice policy challenges relating to the commissioning and delivery of alcohol services for offenders.

Established in 2007, Vision Housing is a small London‐based specialist housing provider working primarily with ex‐offenders. This study seeks to evaluate the impact of Vision Housing's provision of housing and support on re‐offending rates.

The evaluation design compared expected re‐offending rates after one year calculated using offender group reconviction scale (OGRS3) with actual reoffending rates after one year based on data from the police national computer (PNC). “Re‐offending” was defined in line with the current Ministry of Justice definition based on “proven re‐offending”.

The predicted rate of proven re‐offending for 400 clients referred to Vision over 12 months was 40.7 per cent. Their actual proven re‐offending rate over 12 months was 37.0 per cent. This is 3.7 percentage points less than the predicted proven re‐offending rate, equivalent to a 9.1 per cent reduction in proven re‐offending. This result was statistically significant. Analysis also suggested that Vision Housing is more successful with women; offenders under the age of 35; offenders referred by the Prison and Probation Service; offenders with a higher predicted risk of proven re‐offending; and offenders who had committed more serious offences.

The evaluation conducted to date does not include a comparison group and therefore has relatively low levels of internal validity.

The authors are not aware of any UK studies of the impact of housing on re‐offending that have successfully used a more methodologically robust evaluation design. Until such studies are carried out, the results of the current study should be of great interest to policy‐makers and those delivering rehabilitative services to ex‐offenders in partnership with third sector organisations.

This study has produced evidence of the impact of housing on recidivism and quantified that impact.

The prison population in England and Wales has risen dramatically in recent years and rates of reoffending following release are, at best, disappointing. This article considers some of the evidence in relation to what is going wrong and how resettlement for prisoners might be made more effective. Ultimately, however, the expansion in the custodial population mitigates the potential to reduce recidivism. An argument is made for a justice reinvestment approach similar to that advocated by the House of Commons Justice Committee.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the institutional factors that impact on the integration of the formal model of performance management in New Zealand's public service and the model, or models, in use within different agencies and at different levels within those agencies.

The research involved semi‐structured interviews with managers within three agencies of New Zealand's central government as well as a review of their external accountability documents and internal management reports. These data were then interpreted in the context of new institutional sociology. In particular, the institutional carriers identified by Scott (2001) Scott were used to map the characteristics within each agency that support more or less integration, and common use, of performance measures.

It is concluded that an integrated framework of performance objectives, that drops down from the Government's priorities, to Ministers' purchase of goods and services, to managers' objectives at each layer of the agency, does not always exist. Institutional arrangements that emphasise regulative controls are more likely to result in the decoupling of nationally defined frameworks from those used locally by operational managers. Conversely, institutional arrangements that emphasise culturally and cognitively based controls are more likely to support tight coupling of performance management frameworks and practices.

While much has been written about public sector management and what has been referred to as “the New Zealand model”, this has largely been concerned with the management of the public sector as a whole. This research provides an empirical insight on management practices within individual public sector agencies.

In December 2010, the Ministry of Justice published Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders, the Government's Green Paper on criminal justice reform. This paper seeks to discuss the implications of this Green Paper on housing for offenders.

This paper examines the proposals set out in the Green Paper, and in particular the intention to deliver rehabilitative services on a payment‐by‐results basis, and discusses its implications for housing for offenders.

The paper argues that the Green Paper is primarily focused on improving rehabilitation and reducing re‐offending, and that improved access for offenders to housing is essential if this is to be successful. However, it demonstrates that there are significant barriers to be overcome in achieving this and argues that criminal justice service providers and housing providers will need to work together to ensure that these issues are addressed.

The government's proposals to reform the criminal justice system, contained in the Green Paper Breaking the Cycle, are focused primarily on rehabilitation. Improved access for offenders to appropriate and sustainable housing is essential if this is to be successful, as the Green Paper recognises, and a combination of some specific measures and a general move to payment‐by‐results for rehabilitation services is intended to deliver this. However, there are significant barriers to overcome in achieving this and further challenges are presented by cuts in services and changes to housing and welfare policy.

This paper provides a methodological review of a piece of qualitative policy research formulating recommendations for the commissioning and delivery of offender alcohol interventions, for application both within the English region for which it was commissioned, and more widely. It begins by providing some background information on why and how the research was initiated. It then provides a detailed summary of the methods utilised. These were characterised by sustained engagement with diverse stakeholders and the iterative identification of both findings and recommendations. The authors will conclude with a discussion of the validity and possible application of the method adopted to policy research and service development in the field of dual diagnosis and complex needs, particularly in circumstances where impasse at the levels of policy and local strategy is matched with unmet need within a target population.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-considered perspectives of service users engaged in various community sentences based on a “strengths-based” approach to desistance. Further to recent changes in the sector, the paper considers service user views for programmes delivered by combinations of agencies from private, public and third sectors.

The paper is based on analysis of 64 semi-structured interviews with users of four programmes, accompanied with informal fieldwork observations by the researchers as they carried out the research at the premises of service providers.

The research finds that service user perceptions of the legitimacy of programmes are closely related to their understanding of three key dimensions: first, the “authenticity” of those delivering the service; second, the instrumental (in broad terms) gains they expect from engagement; and third, their understanding of the identity and ethos of the programme.

The paper adds important understanding based on service user perceptions in a period when service provision is being diversified. Further directions for other research are identified and it is recognised that a limitation of the current study is that it incorporates a sample drawn from one area.