The drive to improve the effectiveness and efficiency both in bringing offences to justice and in supervising community and custodial punishment are key goals of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). In an area where success forces you to respond to many complex changes quickly, the risks of making mistakes can be significant. Where resources make up a significant proportion of the costs within the process, the efficient use of these resources within an ever changing environment with variable demand requires an approach that can incorporate real complexity.
How can you make changes with the certainty that they’ll achieve their intended results – before you implement them? The use of predictive simulation or a ‘Virtual Model’ provides the answer for many criminal justice organisations.
Since its early use in Police in the mid-1990s, simulation modelling has been used on numerous projects throughout criminal justice engaging with a wide variety of stakeholders across the CJS including all police forces in England and Wales, PSNI, BTP and forces in Scotland, the Home Office and National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA). More recently this has extended beyond police into Ministry of Justice (MOJ), Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs), Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Courts and Probation.
Substantial benefits have been identified and realised in a wide variety of processes in police including the Control Room/Call Handling, Incident Management, Crime Recording and Investigation, Custody and Case Preparation. In addition to these core processes, significant benefits have also been identified in Forensic management and delivery, IT and new technology introduction, PNC processes, Intelligence and Armed Response.
Beyond police, substantial benefits have also been identified in the overall Arrest to Sentence process, CPS processes and court capacity. In addition, further improvements and benefits have also been identified in post sentence processes such as ‘Licence Recalls’
The products and services from Lanner provide the means to create a ‘virtual’ criminal justice world which provides the means to:-
Design, experiment and discover effective procedures and efficiency gains across operationsIdentify the optimum resource deployment solutions Implement changes through ‘evidenced' best practice, acheiving clear understanding from all involved Engage with key stakeholders in the process, enabling informed debate and consensus to be reached