Offender Personality Disorder Pathway – Feasibility Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Offender Personality Disorder Pathway - Feasibility Study
IRAS ID
166071
Contact name
Paul Moran
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 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. It replaces the now decommissioned Dangerous and Personality Disorder Programme. This Pathway model shifts the emphasis away from intensive treatment for a small number of individuals, towards psychologically-informed management of all offenders meeting high risk, high harm criteria. The intention is to provide a network of interventions, from sentencing through prison and back to community, which will reduce the risk of re-offending in a cost effective way.
This study comprises the first stage of a two-stage evaluation. In stage 1, we will test the feasibility of methods to be used in a national evaluation of the OPD Pathway (see cover letter). In stage 2, (assuming the methods tested prove feasible), we will conduct a national evaluation of the OPD Pathway. The over-arching aims of the national evaluation (i.e. stage 2) 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 pathway data will be supplied by the Ministry of Justice. This data will then be analysed by the evaluation team to build a picture of the offenders and activity in the pathway with a view to estimating the cost effectiveness of the pathway.This ethical application relates only to stage 1 i.e. the feasibility of methods which we wish to test for later use in stage 2. We are seeking ethical review of the i) qualitative methods which we wish to use in order to obtain the views of a convenience sample of staff and offenders about the Pathway ii) the use of anonymized and routinely collected offender data for our evaluation, a process for which we have Ministry of Justice governance approval in place (see attachment).
REC name
South Central - Berkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SC/0076
Date of REC Opinion
30 Mar 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion