HM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth justice services.

The Inspectorate’s Research Team provides a research and analytical function with responsibility for:

• reviewing and contributing to the policy and operational evidence base for probation and youth justice services
• ensuring that our inspection standards and activities are underpinned by evidence
• providing technical advice so that our inspections are as robust and impactful as possible.

We are flexible in our approach and seek to optimise the use of our internal resource and collaborate with external researchers in numerous ways, maximising the knowledge, experience and skills across the research community, and helping to produce a balanced view of the evidence base. We are fully committed to publishing and promoting research findings and using them, alongside our inspection findings, to inform our understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth justice services.

We use evidence to develop our inspection programmes and to consider system-wide change that could change people’s lives for the better. We strongly believe that alignment between evidence, policy and delivery is most likely to lead to improved outcomes for individuals and for local communities.