Case study

Prison Service (England & Wales) - ‘Better Quality Services’ review of the Prisoner Escort and Custody Services

The Prison Service is responsible for custody of around 70,000 prisoners in 134 prison establishments in England and Wales. The Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) are provided under contract to the Prison Service, and are responsible for escorting prisoners from police stations to courts, to and from prison to court, and for holding them in custody while at court.

PECS carry out approximately 1.2 million prisoner movements per annum. The principal customers of PECS are the 140 Crown Courts and around 450 local Magistrates’ Courts who remand and sentence prisoners, although the police and individual prisons are also customers. The services were contracted out in eight court areas between 1993 and 1999, and the contracts currently cost in the region of just over £108 million per annum.

The first generation of escort contracts are coming up for renewal between September 2003 and July 2004, and the Prison Service needed to consider whether the services should continue to be contracted in the future, and if so how. PA Consulting Group was engaged to carry out a Better Quality Service review, a Government initiative that aims to improve the quality and value for money of services being provided and to determine the best supplier for each service/function. The Prison Service was keen to explore the scope for savings - particularly when service volumes appeared to be declining - and experience of the first generation of contracts indicated scope for improvement. However, the operational delivery of the services by contractors is a complex, specialised ‘logistical’ business with particular security and prisoner welfare considerations, complicated by the demands of multiple stakeholders in the Criminal Justice System (CJS)