Analysis of the impact of employment on re-offending following release from custody, using Propensity Score Matching

18 Apr 2013 01:15 PM

This report presents analysis which aims to identify the impact (if any) that employment (measured by having a PAYE employment spell notified by a P45) has on reducing re-offending.

The analysis compares the re-offending rates for offenders who get P45 employment in the year following their release from custody with a matched comparison group of offenders with no P45 employment. The rate being used for comparison is the proven one year re-offending rate. The matched comparison group was selected using Propensity Score Matching. Matching enables us to more confidently estimate the impact of P45 employment post-custody on re-offending by minimising the differences between the offenders who did and did not get P45 employment on other characteristics. A limitation here is that the data used for matching is restricted to that which is available in existing systems, and there remains a possibility that the difference after matching reflects differences in underlying characteristics which are not recorded, rather than employment.

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