Trialling Interventions to Increase Early Guilty Pleas

Tender description

In June 2015 the Behavioural insight Team (BIT) conducted small-scale exploratory research on behalf of MoJ to identify opportunities to intervene to encourage defendants to enter earlier guilty pleas. BIT concluded the most promising, feasible and cost-effective behavioural intervention was through providing defendants with salient messages on the Early Guilty Plea discount , with a possible addition of likely sentences with and without the discount. BIT also recommended that further analysis of available data would be required to allow such an intervention to be suitably targeted and to inform the trial design. This requirement is for the Behavioural Insight Team to work in partnership with the Ministry of Justice to take this exploratory work forward. The work will explore the feasibility of undertaking a trial to increase the number of defendants pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity. Subject to the conclusions of the feasibility stage the project may proceed to carrying out a full trial.