Payment by results and the youth justice system: an NAYJ position paper

The coalition government has given notice of a ‘rehabilitation revolution’. At the heart of the proposals is a commitment to the widescale introduction of ‘payment by results’ (PBR) that will inform ‘all work on offending’, including that with children below the age of 18 years. The government argues that such an approach will deliver a range of benefits, but the rationale is largely rhetorical with few arguments of substance adduced in support. The NAYJ is concerned that the rapid introduction of a new, largely ideologically driven, model of service delivery for children in trouble that emphasises market mechanisms will: encourage a risk averse practice at the expense of interventions intended to enhance the wellbeing of children focus on short term reoffending at the expense of other longer term, developmental, outcomes require that issues of proportionality and children’s rights are sidelined as material rewards come to take priority over matters of principle, and generate a range of unintended consequences without delivering the promised reductions in offending behaviour.