Public Order, Justice and Rights

The Public Order, Justice and Rights sector undertake financial and value for money audits of the:

• Home Office and sponsored bodies;
• Ministry of Justice, Law Officers’ Departments and related bodies;
• Parliament, including the House of Commons and House of Lords. 

We aim to improve public service delivery across our sector and reduce the cost to society of crime and justice.

In the 2007-08 financial year, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice collectively spent more than £20 billion on activities to protect public safety. Much of this expenditure is distributed throughout England and Wales to police forces, prisons, local authorities, and bodies such as the UK’s Border Agency.

Our work aims to provide assurance and transparency for the citizen by verifying that resources have been used as intended by Parliament; and in an efficient, effective and economical manner.

We assist our audited bodies with enhancing financial management and governance whilst ensuring proper accountability to Parliament for the use of public funds.

Our recent work has examined steps taken by the Home Office to reduce violent crime, the role of the Parole Board in protecting the public and the compensation process for victims of crime. A full list of our reports is available on this page.

Our value for money work covers primarily the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice: two major departments with responsibility for the civil and criminal justice systems; police, prisons and probation; crime, security and public protection and asylum and immigration. We rigorously scrutinise this complex and high-profile area of public expenditure.

The content of our value for money work varies enormously each year, reflecting the complexity of the topics that we evaluate.

We examine topics as wide ranging as expenditure on prison maintenance and on the New Asylum Model case management.

We do not simply scrutinise the activities of the Home Office and Ministry of Justice with written reports, however. Increasingly, we are also helping these departments improve their performance with a series of innovative methods.  For instance, following our report on violent crime, we are running a series of regional workshops on data sharing for key strategic partners with responsibility for tackling violent crime.

To contact a member of the team working in this sector, please email enquiries@nao.gsi.gov.uk, marking your email for their attention.

Features

Regulating the Security Industry

The private security industry covers a number of services. These include security guarding, door supervision and vehicle clamping. The industry employs about 500,000 people across the United Kingdom. About half are employed on a contract basis rather than directly employed by security companies, and are subject to regulation.

Read full feature: Regulating the Security Industry

Promoting healthier lifestyles for prisoners

Recommendations in our March 2006 report HM Prison Service: Serving time – prisoner diet and exercise included raising awareness about healthy eating and increasing prisoners’ participation in physical education.  Gaining new skills and interests, and in some cases gaining vocational qualifications in these subjects whilst in prison, may be a stepping stone to prisoners becoming responsible citizens when they leave prison.

Read full article: Promoting healthier lifestyles for prisoners

How can we reduce vehicle crime?

In our report on Reducing vehicle crime we recognised that, notwithstanding significant achievements to date, the number of vehicle-related crimes remained high.  To help in the effort to reduce vehicle crime, we commissioned two good practice guides, Identifying Potential Offenders and Using communication to tackle theft from vehicles.  These are designed to help local Crime and Disorder Partnerships (CDRPs) to deal with vehicle crime. 

Read full article: How can we reduce vehicle crime?

See also our conference: Reducing Vehicle Crime - Developing effective strategies and exploring good practice

The Cancellation of Bicester Accommodation Centre

In November 2007, we published our report on the Cancellation of the Bicester Accommodation Centre.

In October 2001, the Home Office announced plans to deliver 3,000 places in four purpose built accommodation centres as a pilot project to help speed up the processing of asylum applications. The Department bought a former Ministry of Defence site near Bicester and applied for planning permission for the first centre. Outline planning permission was secured in November 2004.

Read full article: The Cancellation of Bicester Accommodation Centre

Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour

The NAO, in association with Neil Stewart Associates, held a one day conference on Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour at the Inmarsat Conference Centre in London on 7 December 2006. For further details please see the Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour Conference brochure (PDF 229kb).

NAO Report Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour

Alternatives to Custody

On 7 March 2006 in London, the NAO hosted a conference on 'Using community punishments to reduce re-offending and prison overcrowding'.