The Skill Mill

Project insights

1. Community acceptance is critical for SIBs in the criminal justice field

   Referrals to existing services and support for youth offenders is often inadequate at preventing reoffending. David Parks, the Founder and Managing Director of The Skill Mill, says, 'our primary aim is to create employment for the young people to re-engage positively with society.'  Providing young people with suitable employment opportunities to contribute to the local community can be a way to actively build community acceptance. As Parks and White note, ‘all of us – young people, supervisors, residents and businesses – gain a better appreciation of the other and the positives that result from giving something back to the community' (Parks and White, 2016). In effect, the programme creates a psychological contract for achieving the common goal of ‘social integration of young offenders’ between relevant stakeholders.

   Research findings in criminology suggest that having community ties, fulfilling employment, recognition of their value by others, and a sense of meaning and purpose in life all contribute to reducing the likelihood of reoffending (Maruna and Mann, 2019). In practice, however, job opportunities for high-risk offenders can be limited unless there are well-functioning local networks within a community, committed to supporting their transition into employment. While community acceptance is elusive and difficult to quantify, job attainment can be a proxy metric that reflects the extent to which it has been achieved.

2. Outcomes achievement can be a “certificate of rehabilitation” to facilitate the development of community partnerships

   Bringing investors and local employers on board with offender rehabilitation practices can be time-consuming. One of the reasons is psychological reluctance in the community, generated through stigma and labelling of ‘offenders’. For instance, some may worry that hiring delinquents can be cumbersome. This is despite the fact that many people who have met them in person indicate that they have a positive impression of them. As a result, criminal justice specialist organisations are heavily reliant on government grants to provide rehabilitation services. Without efforts designed to address the offender label and stigma, delinquents may continue to lead lives that are disconnected from mainstream communities, unable to gain positive acceptance for their new non-offending identity (Best and Savic, 2015).

   In this context, achievement of outcomes defined in the SIBs within the criminal justice field can be considered a 'certificate of rehabilitation' to recognise offenders' efforts towards change. Through employment and community service, the Skill Mill programme reaffirms participants of their non-offending identity. Contributing to the local community through valued environmental work can boost young people's confidence and their sense of belonging to the community. The programme is also valuable to local communities, as it promotes job creation in the green economy through environmental work, while also enhancing community cohesion and resilience. By establishing an overarching vision for encouraging social integration of young people excluded from the labour market and defining outcome metrics that capture partners' diverse needs, the SIB has the potential to facilitate the development of community partnerships.

3. There is a need to consider indicators other than reoffending rate and adjust the programme to local contexts 

   As the early terminations of SIBs in the criminal justice filed in the US and Australia suggest, reducing reoffending is extremely complex, not least because the effectiveness of the rehabilitation programmes can depend on individuals’ motivation to change their own life trajectories. Furthermore, criminological research findings suggest that the effectiveness of interventions is highly context-dependent (Hough, 2010). This is particularly the case for community-based programmes - what works in one region at a given time may not work well in another context. These challenges, combined with the general lack of familiarity with initiatives within the criminal justice field and the mixed success of previous initiatives, may contribute to risk aversion among social investors and other stakeholders alike. When liaison with existing statutory services is crucial for service delivery, as was the case for the Skill Mill SIB, partnerships will need to be developed region by region. Skill Mill programme has been designed on a bottom-up basis, based on David and his team’s nearly 20 years’ experience as criminal justice practitioners.

   While the reoffending rate may be the obvious choice for an outcome metric in the criminal justice field, the context-dependent nature of rehabilitation programmes necessitates other outcomes metrics to be considered. Rather than solely targeting reduction in reoffending, the Skill Mill leverages the SIB framework to bring private actors into a local collaborative network by incorporating other metrics including community acceptance (using proxy metrics such as attainment of employment and qualification). Such an approach has also been adapted by Portugal's Breaking Bars Farm SIB (a year-long SIB job training programme for inmates), in which the integration into the labour market is the only positive outcome indicator. This approach may be more practical than using the reoffending rate as the only outcome metric.