A way forward: tackling the revolving door through targeted local action
Every community feels the impact of people caught in relentless cycles of crisis, crime and custody.
People in this group typically commit acquisitive crime, often to fund addictions and because of other unmet needs. Because they are not the most dangerous offenders, they tend not to qualify for intense interventions and services are generally too segregated to work together to help them, so they simply slip through the net.
Combining lived experience and data, our report, Preventing the Revolving Door, revealed the scale of the problem. More than 29,000 people are trapped in the revolving door across England and Wales. Together they account for up to £5bn a year – at least 23% of all reoffending costs.
Behind these numbers are common patterns. Our lived experience members tell us about trauma, abuse, unstable housing, poor schooling and addiction shaping their lives. The data tells the same story. People with ten or more offences typically have multiple unmet needs. One individual caught in this cycle can cost public services up to £1.4m over their lifetime.
Yet, the revolving door is not inevitable. We are fortunate at Revolving Doors to see this everyday – through our members – people who have broken that cycle and are leading positive, healthy lives. What we know from them is that too often systems fail them because they are disjointed and simply not set up to deal with people with complex issues.
Whilst the Sentencing Act’s presumption to suspend short prison sentences is welcome, this will only be a delay to people going to custody, rather than an alternative if new approaches are not found.
While Intensive Supervision Courts and some Integrated Offender Management schemes provide solutions in some parts of the country – in other locations there is little true help.
The Priority Cohort
We recommend that each police force area, working with local partners, identifies around a set number of individuals from the revolving door cohort. We call this group the Priority Cohort.
These will be people known to services as prolific, persistent and problematic offenders, but whose behaviour is also clearly linked to their unmet needs.
Instead of responding to their offending in isolation, local services would work together to manage and support this group in a coordinated way.
A key element of the model is a cross-agency problem-solving conference, bringing together police, probation, health services, housing and the voluntary sector which seek to work together to solve the issues preventing the individual from moving forward.
Within this structure, two roles are particularly important.
Peer supporters – people with lived experience of the justice system – can build trust and engagement in ways that traditional services sometimes struggle to do.
Navigators, based on the model used in Nottingham’s Changing Futures programme, help individuals move through complex systems and access the support they need.
The aim is not to create new programmes, but to join up existing services so they work together around the people who need them most.
The evidence is already there
There is strong evidence that this kind of approach works.
The government’s Changing Futures programme, launched in 2021, brought together local partners in 15 areas to support people experiencing multiple disadvantage – including homelessness, addiction, mental ill health and contact with the justice system.
Evaluation showed that when services work together around individuals, they can engage people previously seen as “too hard to reach”. Areas reported better engagement with housing and health services, reductions in crisis service use, and early signs of lower reoffending.
There is also a strong fiscal case. Reductions in police callouts, hospital admissions and emergency accommodation mean real savings for public services – savings that can be reinvested into prevention and recovery.
A targeted Priority Cohort would allow local areas to focus resources where they can have the greatest impact.
It would reduce reoffending, improve health and life outcomes, and ease pressure on the police, courts, prisons and the NHS.
It is also good for victims. By tackling the causes of repeat offending, we prevent future crimes and reduce harm to communities.
The revolving door has trapped too many people, and cost communities too much, for too long.
But with the right local leadership, cross-agency collaboration and the involvement of people with lived experience, it can be turned into something else: a pathway to recovery, stability and safer communities.
The government has already committed to implementing a whole systems approach to women in the justice system. We urge the government to look at this option for people in the revolving door too.
