Effectiveness of alternatives to prison

• Effectiveness of Alternatives to Prison

  • Cost
  • Reoffending low
  • Allows people to treat cause of crime
• Cost


  Much cheaper than sending criminals to prison (e.g. costs around £2,000 for an electronic tag compared to £35,000 per prisoner per year)
• Reoffending low


  Reduces reoffending rate if people are kept in the community (e.g. reoffending rate in Scotland was 26% in 2017)
• Allows people to treat cause of crime

  Allows people to treat the root cause of their crime to prevent further offending (e.g. 2020/21 there were 35.4 thousand drug offences recorded by the police in Scotland)
• Not effective (they are unsuccessful)


  • People don't pay
  • People don't complete their community payback
• People don't pay


  No guarantee that people will pay this and then you need to chase them up (e.g. 40% of people in 2019/20 who refused to pay faced no further consequences)
• People don't complete their community payback

  The risk you take of giving someone a CPO is that they won't complete this (e.g. One out of every 3 CPOs are not completed (2018/19))