MOJ could 'shrink' with social enterprise input

The Ministry of Justice believes social enterprise is key to helping the department deal with cash cuts of up to 20 per cent.

At today's MOJ social enterprise conference in London, Julie Taylor, the ministry's director of offender management strategy and third sector 'champion', said social enterprise could play a part in reducing a 45 per cent reoffending rate.

This could save up to £38,000 a year for every person caught in a cycle of courts and prison.

Taylor said the MOJ's ambition was to scale down its 'businesses' in a bid to make savings of £360m in the costs of frontline services, and £250m in back office savings, until 2013 from a baseline of £8.5bn.

To do this, organisations providing a holistic service to support offenders and reduce the risk of them offending again needed to be given support to innovate.

'If we can shrink the work MOJ does by getting people out of the cycle, we would see that [the savings] as a possibility,' she said.

One of the biggest areas of focus for the MOJ is offender management, which Taylor said needed a greater focus on innovation and partnership with the MOJ.

'We haven't cracked some of the biggest and most complex social challenges,' she said, citing such areas as mental illness and drug addiction.

Taylor also highlighted the court system, which needed to be modernised and 'seen as a last resort'. She said better processes to deal with disputes and petty crime would help avoid sending people back to court.

'To me, this has social enterprise all over it,' she said.

Legal aid was the final area of focus, which Taylor said was too traditional in its set up.

Sally Reynolds, CEO of Social Firms UK, explained that providing employment through social firms - organisations employing those furthest from the job market, such as offenders ­- was one solution.

As an example of what they did, she said the UK's 170 social firms had saved the government £30m by getting people off benefits.

However, she added that setting up a social firm was tough, needing grant funding for start-ups rather than loans, and that annual running costs were higher than other businesses because of the extra support their employees needed.

But Reynolds said this innovation was essential to ensure the job centre was not the first stop for a former offender leaving prison, which was 'psychologically damaging' and the first step back to reoffending for many.