The ministry has been tasked with tackling major backlogs while also delivering ambitious reforms. Recently appointed CDIO Mark Thompson tells PublicTechnology how tech and data will play a key role.
The homepage of the Justice in Numbers section of GOV.UK tells visitors that there were 9.4 million crimes reported in government’s most recent annual survey. These incidents cost an estimated £58.9bn. Some of them may have been among the three million-plus cases that went through court or tribunal during the year – or among the record-high 74,561 that sit in the crown court backlog. They may even have added to the current prison population of 87,726, or the probation caseload of 240,362.
Each time those numbers – and many, many other statistics that stem from them – are added to or reduced represents a piece of data collected by the Ministry of Justice. However big the numbers in question, this adds up to a lot of work – and a whole lot of information at the ministry’s disposal.
Mark Thompson (pictured above), who was appointed as MoJ group chief digital and information officer in April, must have been relieved to find that “there’s been some really good work done on data that I can see since I’ve been here”.
He adds: “I’m really, really impressed at the level of understanding and maturity of data and the use of technologies. We’ve got… the fundamentals: we’ve got an analytics platform that’s really good, very well-engineered in terms of the depth of understanding of the different datasets.”
This increased understanding via data has encompassed “detailed work on the courts backlog and really getting under the bonnet of where the flows were in the data” regarding the problem – which, as of September last year, has hit and remained at a new record peak.
“There’s a great deal of insight on that data, which we had to work in partnership with the court system to really get to the bottom of,” says Thompson, who joined the ministry from an equivalent role in the Cabinet Office. “So, we’ve got the analytical cases to drive [progress]. We’ve got the technology, and we’ve got the analytical skills.”
He adds: “But the thing about data – and this universe – is there are lots of very knotty problems that we don’t really fully understand. And policy, therefore, can’t be fully developed, because it’s not fully informed.”
The digital chief points to one recent example – in which his MoJ colleagues worked on new and accurate ways of determining how many children have a parent in prison – that illustrates the potential for better data to support improved planning and policymaking.
“There’s quite a few social issues that can arise from not thinking about this; children of prisoners have different needs, and they actually can end up with worse outcomes through school,” Thompson says. “There’s also [the need for] thinking about how you accommodate them in prisons so they get to maintain contact. So there’s loads of things that [relate to this] – but one thing that we weren’t sure of was the size of the problem.”
“A lot of prison officers have monitors and cameras… and there’s a greater use for safety and effectiveness through that type of technology”
He adds: “There’s been a number of methods, and we’ve drawn on machine learning to trawl through notes and other records and a whole mix of other datasets to really work out what the actual number is, and how many people in prison actually have dependent children – and we discovered that, essentially, our reporting of them had underestimated the number by half.”
The conclusion was that there are 192,912 children in England and Wales with a parent currently in prison – compared with an estimate of about 100,000 made in 2023 by leading civil society group the Prison Advice and Care Trust, which derived its numbers from MoJ data.
“That’s [an example of] a data team using a full plethora of machine-learning ops and data analysis to solve a particular problem,” Thompson says. “And they’re now working on all sorts of detailed insights from that.”
Security and spending
The MoJ – and the wider justice system – has been asked to deliver some of the most ambitious and high-profile policy objectives of the Labour government. This includes plans to significantly ramp up the capacity of the probation system and provide a big boost in staff and equipment, as well as delivery of the recommendations set out in Brian Leveson’s major two-part review of sentencing.
Thompson says these intended reforms represent “real strong aspiration from the government” and are accompanied by a “settlement from the Spending Review that is favourable to the department – obviously not everything [we bid for], but it’s a good step forward”.
All of which adds up to a singular chance for digital and data to match the ambition of the policy and programmes it will support in the coming years, according to the CDIO.
“My role is to make sure – as the digital, data, technology and AI partner – that the capability of the department is optimised and set up to really deliver against the objectives,” he adds. “And I think, with a three-year window, this is almost a once-in-a-generation opportunity in government to actually think and deliver over a number of years. Because for some while, we’ve had relatively short spending-review cycles, and it’s quite difficult to [address] complicated problems. We now have a real moment in time and a real opportunity to drive that [progress] – and that’s one of my key priorities: to make sure we’re set up for that.”
While carefully planned long-term reform programmes may offer the chance to approach tech transformation more thoughtfully, sometimes an unexpected short-term crisis can also present a valuable opportunity.
In April, MoJ arm’s-length body the Legal Aid Agency suffered a cyberattack in which criminals accessed what the agency described as a “significant amount” of citizens’ personal data, including contact details, criminal histories and financial information.
Since then, ministers have – perhaps unsurprisingly – not been shy in pinning a significant proportion of the blame on the current government’s predecessors, claiming that the breach was made possible by fragile IT systems resulting from “long years of neglect”.
After first acknowledging that the fallout of the attack has been “incredibly difficult for the legal profession… [as well as] for our technical people and business people”, Thompson agrees – in much more diplomatic language than his ministerial colleagues – that the incident has accelerated the argument for much-needed upgrades.
“It’s been really disruptive but, actually, it ran alongside the development of us thinking about transformation,” he says. “So in some respects, it’s been quite helpful because it’s enforced all our understanding [of the LAA] – and I have a much greater deal of understanding about how it works. And in order to try and restore some of these services, we’ve tackled things that we probably wouldn’t have tackled for years – things that we thought might take us three years and millions of hours to do – we’ve [tackled] through a combination of policy change and business change.”
In focus: Working with GDS
As well as striving towards its own transformation ambitions, the ministry is also working with colleagues from the expanded Government Digital Service. Since being moved into its new home in the reimagined ‘digital centre’ of government in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, GDS has ramped up its delivery of several major new platforms for both departments and citizens.
“We are engaging with them on a couple of things at the moment, including the GOV.UK Wallet, and One Login – two big, cross-cutting investments being made by government,” Thompson says. “There are services that we’ve got that might make sense, [for the wallet] – power of attorney might be one. That is a mature product, which could integrate quite well.”
AI ambitions
The MoJ recently unveiled a department-wide action plan for artificial intelligence that set out a vision to “embed” the technology across the ministry.
Thompson reveals that trials of common AI platforms – including Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT – are already under way.
“ChatGPT is there for people to use safely by loading documents and asking questions, [to which it can] help suggest ways forward and edit things,” he adds. “Copilot is very good because it has access to your email and your documents so, [for example], it can very quickly scan 500 emails and give you a summary that says: ‘Here’s where we are on this.’ It’s like having a very good assistant that goes away and finds stuff for you.”
To support more complex potential use cases across the wider justice system, earlier this summer, the ministry launched an AI and Data Science Ethics Framework developed in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute. According to the MoJ’s online guidance, the document is intended to encourage “ethical reflection and deliberation throughout all stages of a project’s lifecycle”.
Alongside these ethical fundaments, the MoJ will also look to build its future uses of AI on sturdy technical foundations. Thompson once again cites the recent Spending Review – and the long-term policy objectives government hopes it will support – as a singular chance for digital progress. But for an organisation that operates 140 separate digital products – each with its own development roadmap – it is an opportunity that requires careful thought and planning.
“We are looking at the backbone [and asking]: what’s the technology architecture that we’re going to move forward with? And then that will combine with the allocation of money, and allow us to be really clear on our roadmaps,” the CDIO says. “The AI work [we are currently doing] is good for now… but a bit of tightening up [and] optimisation will allow us to really accelerate these things and bring them to life quicker. Because scaling up is the hard thing – you can get a pilot working with one prison easy enough, but to get it in 120 prisons takes a bit more work.”
Prisons and probation
A “fundamental part” of the digital progress plans set out in the MoJ’s spending-review bid was an ambition to deliver “some more modern tools to make it much easier for a probation service to operate”.
One of the first such tools is a new app – currently going through a pilot phase – which aims to provide probation officers with a single hub from which they can manage a caseload that, in recent years, has reportedly grown to more than 50 offenders for many frontline workers.
“The app [provides] one place that allows a probation officer to see where 30 or 40 people are, what their needs are, and what the officer’s calendar appointments are. And it’s a mechanism [from which we can] build out lots of capabilities,” the CDIO says.
Design principles for prisoner services
- Design for basic literacy, numeracy and digital skills
- Anticipate complex access needs
- Build trust, show respect, design with data
- Prioritise privacy
- Practise authenticity and diversity
- Push boundaries, realistically
Alongside these internal tools, the MoJ has already delivered some hugely impactful digital public services, according to Thompson.
One of the earliest – and most powerful – examples of this is the online service for booking prison visits that, since replacing a “very tedious manual process” about a decade ago, has been used to successfully arrange 760,000 visits. In each case, the time taken to do so has been reduced from about one and a half days to less than 30 seconds.
Families have also benefitted from a deployment of video-call options – that began during the early weeks of the Covid crisis – while the process for moving prisoners securely from one facility to another has also been digitised.
The ministry revealed last year that it had established a set of six principles to guide digital designers in developing services for prisoners: design for basic literacy, numeracy and digital skills; anticipate complex access needs; build trust, show respect, design with data; prioritise privacy; practise authenticity and diversity; and push boundaries, realistically.
The overall ambition is to create “simple designs with clear messages, delivered in a trauma-informed way”.
In guidance published in 2022, government described the trauma-informed approach to service delivery as a method that is intended “to see beyond an individual’s presenting behaviours and to ask, ‘what does this person need?’ rather than ‘what is wrong with this person?”. Other prominent adopters of this model include the Department for Work and Pensions.
Thompson says: “A key part of any digital strategy is putting the user first, and we do lots of user research into getting the design right so that it works and it’s accessible, and it considers [user needs]… Trauma-informed services are, essentially, an added dimension of that – to recognise that, in our space, these are not just general groups of users with particular personas. These are people with very complex needs, which require a deeper level of analysis and of psychological understanding… Some of the needs relate to multi-layered traumatic experiences – they’re not just somebody with one particular [service] need. They’ve had a very different lived experience and – rather than just how a service looks and feels, and what people might engage with – we really need that deeper understanding when we start to develop these things. It’s about awareness.”
Launchpad for progress
Work to deliver more and better digital services for prisoners has accelerated in the past couple of years with the MoJ’s Launchpad programme, which provides in-cell access to laptops and specialist digital services – with the aim of better supporting rehabilitation.
“The key to success for a prisoner on release is how well connected they are in society,” Thompson says. “Some people have been in prison since before the internet was invented, [and then] come out into the world. So, whilst there are targeted training and work programmes within prisons, there’s value from trying to provide better technology to them – [which gives them] access to learning, and some controlled communication with their family with videoconferencing.”
The programme has already deployed in-cell across 19 prisons and is delivering benefits to almost 13,000 prisoners, according to the digital chief.
Devices do not connect to the open internet and are designed so that only the single authorised user can operate the machine in question to access a secure internal network.
A further 12 institutions have implemented computing kiosks offering access from communal areas.
As well as the benefits for prisoners, the MoJ has calculated that wing officers working in prisons where Launchpad has been fully rolled out have benefited from time savings of up to 10%, allowing more time for interactions with prisoners – particularly the most vulnerable.
“This is almost a once-in-a-generation opportunity in government to actually think and deliver over a number of years”
Gradual implementation across the rest of the prison estate – encompassing 122 institutions in England and Wales, 105 of which are operated by HMPPS – will continue from this autumn onwards. The pace of progress from that point will be subject to the availability of funding – as well as to the project’s inherent technical complexity.
“It’s quite hard, because we’ve got quite an old estate,” Thompson says. “WiFi access was never a top priority [in the construction of] Victorian prisons!”
Beyond the rollout of such technological basics, Thompson sees a longer-term opportunity – working alongside the ministry’s Justice Science Unit – to use digital platforms and data to help drive use of emerging tools to improve the management and, ultimately, the safety of prisons.
“We can use all the intelligence we have about location through cameras [and] other detectors – technology which is already there. There are pilots taking place, and we’ve got an opportunity to really leverage that to drive much more effective management and insight, and risk management,” he says. “You can do things like monitor if someone in a cell is unconscious through infrared monitoring. You can detect all sorts of behaviours or potential aggression – a lot of prison officers have monitors and cameras… and there’s a greater use for safety and effectiveness through that type of technology.”
There may seem to be an inherent friction between making such forward-thinking plans on the one hand, while the other works to bring ancient buildings into the 20th century – let alone the 21st.
But Thompson says that these two imperatives are “not a million miles apart “.
“They’re not completely competing with themselves,” he says. “But we are constrained naturally, not always able to do it all at once. So, we have to be a bit clever in how one thing enables another or is built on top of it, and we need to be able to take a broader architectural and strategic approach to this. But we have got the ability to hang all that together and make sure it is coherent.
“We tell a good story.”
