Rebalancing Act
This resource is aimed at a broad range of stakeholders, locally, regionally and nationally. It aims to support them in understanding and meeting the health and social care needs of people in contact with the criminal justice system. We hope this will reduce offending and improve community safety.
There is a high prevalence of health and social problems among those in contact with the criminal justice system. This paper proposes ways of addressing some of the challenges, structured around themes of policy, prevalence, and partnership and governance.
This paper offers a brief overview of:
- the key health inequalities experienced by this population
- some of the associations between health and social care needs with offending and reoffending behaviour
- the identification of some of the key stakeholders who can come together at a local level to address these needs.
We introduce the context and the need for action. We also highlight some of the activity currently being undertaken in local areas to try to address some of the challenges.
This resource draws on a range of published data. However, one of the biggest obstacles when attempting to redesign systems locally is the data. Much of it is incomplete, out of date, unpublished, or widely dispersed.
Partnership is central to the place-based delivery and planning of services and assessment of need. The need to break out of system siloes is also key. We therefore welcome recent changes that may facilitate moves towards this by moving decisions and funding to a local level.
We hope that this resource will act as a catalyst for local action. The essential ingredients will be:
- a clear vision of what is to be achieved
- strong leadership at local level
- effective collaboration across health and justice organisations and local government and third sector organisations
- the placing of people – those who offend, those who are victims of crime, and the needs of the whole community – at the centre of our plans.
