"Hull Prison houses 1,040 offenders at any time. Nationally, the average cost of an offender in prison for a year is between £40,000 and £50,000. In the year ending March 2008, 403 prisoners had been released from Hull Prison directly into Hull. Re-offending rates for those sentenced to less than 12 months in custody remained the highest of all disposals, with an actual reoffending rate of 58.8 per cent and a frequency of 282.7 offences per 100 offenders."
(Working Neighbourhood Fund Business case: 2009)
The Minerva project is a Hull CSP-led project funded by the partners and income generated from the Minerva Social Enterprise (Hull) Community Interest Company (CIC) and its voluntary sector partners. These include Hull Community and Voluntary Services (CVS) and Hull and East Yorkshire Mind. Through a range of activities, it has enhanced the resettlement process for ex-offenders returning to the city of Hull, following a sentence of less than 12 months.
Minerva team
The Minerva team consists of an engagement team of four tasked with operating within the walls of HMP Hull and its cluster prisons, providing ‘through the gate care' for offenders re-entering society. The team members are seconded from the prison or probation service and have been trained in coaching, mentoring and engaging hard-to-reach offenders who are referred to as ‘volunteers', as the project is totally voluntary.
A support team of three workers operates from a newly-refurbished Resource Centre on the perimeter of Hull Prison. This part of the team is staffed by experts in the pathways out of offending. These include accommodation, education, training and employment, health, alcohol and drugs, finance, debt and benefit issues, attitudes and behaviour and family issues. Staff members are drawn from both the public and voluntary arenas and all have extensive expertise in their fields with ‘reach back' into their respective organisations. They give immediate and accessible advice and guidance to the Minerva workers, their volunteers and to members of their families attending the prison to visit their partners. The team ensures that services and service providers integrate at the correct operational and strategic level, thereby minimising waste and duplication.
The final part of the team is the project manager – an administrative worker and a performance and data analyst who records and evaluates performance so that any best practice can be disseminated to other agencies and partners throughout the UK.
Community Interest Company (CIC)
An innovative part of the project is the creation a social enterprise or CIC with sufficient resources to bridge gaps in the labour market. The CIC has a management board of public sector workers involved with the project and a local magistrate. It complements the work of the Hull Prison Resettlement team, and works with offenders in the weeks preceding release to ensure their future employability. This includes a factory manager and work supervisors on site, assisted by several ex-volunteers, 25 whom are now gainfully employed by the social enterprise.
The Minerva staff ‘meet at the gate' on the day an offender is released, which is accepted as a critical period of need. They introduce them to the social enterprise employment opportunity and offer support through the next 12 to 16 weeks of integration back into society.
The social enterprise (CIC) consists of two renovated factory units within Hull on a community asset transfer lease for 25 years from Hull City Council. The Minerva volunteers and staff fully refurbished the factories as an operating base. In the process, they attained accredited skills in entrepreneurship, business development, building and allied trades and IT skills. All these skills will be subject to nationally-agreed training standards and NVQ attainment by Hull training and others training providers. These skills are crucial to the future regeneration of the city and its workforce. After sufficient progress in the social enterprise volunteers are assisted to move on into employment within the community and local business.
The social enterprise now has 12 micro businesses, all of which are described on our website (see below). The social enterprise is actively engaged with several local businesses allowing its workforce to assist each other in skills transference and the gathering of paid contract work. The social enterprise has successfully negotiated several contracts with council services, area teams and departments. These businesses operating in the long term will generate income to ensure the sustainability of the Minerva project.
www.minervasocialenterprise.co.uk
Outcomes
The current performance figures show that there are 602 people engaged with the project. From this 82 have re-offended within the target period of 12 weeks. This gives a re-offending rate of 14.69 per cent. In addition, 266 volunteers are in the community leading active and stable lives. Thirty-one places have been secured on Future Job Fund projects and the social enterprise now employs 25 ex-offenders full time.
On a cost-benefit analysis it is agreed nationally that each offender would cost the criminal justice system between £40,000 and £50,000 a year. So, if calculated on the current engagement rate, since February 2010 the project will have saved the public purse £21,087,939.
Police and crime commissioners
For a police and crime commissioner (PCC), the benefits of exploring new ways of reducing reoffending and investing in communities are clear. Participation in the scheme can both reduce reoffending (and hence lower crime rates and reduce the number of victims) and help to regenerate communities.