Offender Personality Disorder Pathway – National Evaluation
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Offender Personality Disorder Pathway – National Evaluation
IRAS ID
204989
Contact name
Paul Moran
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
204989, IRAS Project ID; 15/SC/0076, REC Ref; 2015-081, NOMS Ref
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway has been jointly commissioned by NHS England and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) as the new Strategy for Personality Disordered Offenders This Pathway model places an emphasis on psychologically informed management of all offenders with personality difficulties meeting high risk, high harm criteria and female offenders also meeting medium risk criteria. The intention is to provide a network of interventions, from sentencing through prison and back to community, which will reduce the risk of reoffending in a cost effective way. This study comprises the second stage of a two stage evaluation. In stage 1, we tested the feasibility of methods for i) conducting interviews with male offenders and ii) collating, linking and analysing anonymised NOMS OPD Pathway data (IRAS Ref 15/SC/0076 and NOMs ethics Ref: 2015-081). In stage 2, we intend to conduct a national evaluation of the OPD Pathway for both male and female offenders. The overarching aims of the national evaluation are to investigate the impact and cost effectiveness of the OPD Pathway as well as providing a longitudinal description of the process of implementation, management and operation of the Pathway. Assessment of impact will be conducted using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Qualitative data will be obtained from a sample of offenders and staff working within defined Pathway services. Routinely collected, anonymised quantitative NOMS pathway data will be supplied by the Ministry of Justice for the purposes of evaluating the effect of the pathway on offenders’ mental health and behaviour, as well as the impact of the pathway on the costs of managing offenders.
This ethical application relates only to Stage 2. We are seeking ethical review of the i) qualitative methods to obtain the views of a convenience sample of staff and offenders about the Pathway ii) use of offender case note data to complement the offender interview data iii) use of anonymized and routinely collected offender data for our evaluation (Ministry of Justice governance approval in place; see attachment).
REC name
South Central - Berkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SC/0299
Date of REC Opinion
4 Jul 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion