Social impact bonds: Unlocking new investment in rehabilitation

Successful rehabilitation will deliver benefits to society and reduce publicspending on the prison system. In simple terms, fewer offenders will commit less crime,requiring fewer prisons, costing less money. With 60% of short sentence prisonersre-offending within a year of release,there is huge opportunity to revolutionise therehabilitation of prisoners.

The challenge is that reducing re-offending is a long-term commitment, requiring time and investment. There is a natural time lag between offering new and improvedrehabilitation services, reducing re-offending and closing prisons. With no new publicfunding available for rehabilitation services, particularly in the current spendingenvironment, how can the transformation be funded?