Co-producing change: resettlement as a mutual enterprise

Prison numbers have continued to rise across the UK over the last decade despite a corresponding reduction in crime rates, suggesting a custodial turn in sentencing practices. As a penal response, the well documented failure of prison to rehabilitate prisoners and support their civic reintegration1 is a costly concern, with each prison place costing an average of £39,573 in England and Wales2, £73,762 in Northern Ireland3 and £32,146 in Scotland4. In this context, the ongoing financial crisis has necessarily added considerable
weight to arguments in favour of reconfiguring criminal justice to better facilitate reductions in the cost of re-offending, estimated in England and Wales to amount to between £7 billion and £10 billion per year5.