Financial Statements 2016 | Page 53

8. Youth offender services Fry Housing Trust and Heantun Housing Association both deliver youth offender services. Both organisations have an excellent track record of working with ex-offenders to re-integrate them into society. Through this work, the Trust and Heantun are able to equip their customers with the skills to improve their life chances and their employability in the future. Heantun Housing Association 189 clients exited the service within this timeframe and only 25 returned to custody. This shows 13% of the clients who completed support during this 12 month period went back to custody. Some of which were for breaches of orders rather than re-offending. The average cost of sending someone to prison for a year is greater than £27,675 and in fact judged to be around £42,000. Fry Housing Trust 1,600 clients last year were looked after during the year. 340 known offenders exited the service over the past 12 months, of which only 37 (11%) re-offended whilst receiving a service from Fry. This compares favourably with the national re-offending rate of 25%, and calculations suggest that the savings to the criminal justice system generated by this lower re-offending rate to be around £1m – creating a social value of around £6.50 for every £1 invested in services. The Trust captures re-offending information throughout the time that a client is being supported, and works to a 90% non-reoffending performance target. Estimated costs savings (to Criminal Justice services) per offender For those offenders being committed to custody, this would include all costs provided in the table, whilst for those sentenced to a community order would include all costs with the exception of the cost for custody. Total for offender (community based, no custody) = £8,889 Total for offender (custody for average of 16 months) = £45,126 Cost Prevention Summary (based on 48 clients with 13 into custody) The cost of providing housing related support for 48 clients has been calculated as £153,646. Without this spend many other costs would be incurred by a range of other agencies. It has been established that the national re-offending rate for adult offenders is 25%. Therefore, it can be reasonably assumed that without FHT’s support, the identified number of 48 clients may have re-offended with, on average (applying the national average), 27% (13 clients) going into custody and the remainder receiving a community sentence. The table below shows the total estimated cost preventions for 48 clients with 13 of these entering custody. Continued > Financial Statements 2016 51