Purpose: This study aims to systematically search and review all the relevant studies that have estimated the cost of crime of adult offenders.Methods: Fifteen databases were searched for published studies and grey literature. We included studies that estimated the cost of crime of adult offenders. Due to high heterogeneity results were synthesised descriptively.Results: Twenty-one studies estimated the cost of crime. There was considerable variance in the estimated total costs of crime and studies from the United States consistently reported the highest total costs. All the studies consistently included robbery and burglary in the total cost estimate. Homicide was ranked as the most costly offence and accounted on average for 31% of the total cost of crime, followed by drug offence (21%) and fraud (17%). Crime categories that involved violence to a person were associated with large intangible costs.Conclusions: While it is difficult to precisely determine what caused the large variance in the total cost estimates, we think that it could be due to changes in unit costs, changes in crime trends, and variations in the methods used to estimate costs. The findings from this systematic review highlight the need for more up-to-date studies with better reporting standards.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

IntroductionCare farms, where all or part of the farm is used for therapeutic purposes, show much potential for improving the health and well-being of a range of disadvantaged groups. Studies to date have been qualitative or observational, with limited empirical evidence of the effectiveness of care farms in improving health and well-being. Understanding the underlying mechanisms that lead to improvements for different disadvantaged groups is a further gap in the evidence. Participants in this study are offenders serving community orders. Their low socioeconomic status and poor health outcomes relative to the general population exemplifies disadvantage.Methods and analysisThis paper describes the protocol of a study to understand the impacts of care farms and to pilot the design and tools for a study to assess cost-effectiveness of care farms in improving the quality of life of offenders. As a pilot study, no power calculation has been conducted. However, 150 offenders serving community sentences on care farms and 150 on other probation locations (eg, litter picking, painting) will be recruited over a 1-year period. Changes in quality of life, measured by Clinical Outcome in Routine Evaluation–Outcome Measure, health and reconvictions of offenders at care farms compared to other probation locations will be analysed to inform the sample size calculation for the follow on study. The feasibility of recruitment, retention, collecting cost data and modelling cost-effectiveness will also be assessed. The study will use qualitative methods to explore the experiences of offenders attending care farms and perceptions of probation and care farm staff on the processes and impacts of the intervention.Ethics and disseminationFindings will be published and inform development of a natural experiment and will be disseminated to probation services, care farms and academics. University of Leeds Ethical Review Board approved: SoMREC/13/014. National Offender Management Service (NOMS) approved: 2013-257.

Care farming (also called social farming) is the therapeutic use of agricultural and farming practices. Service users and communities supported through care farming include people with learning disabilities, mental and physical health problems, substance misuse, adult offenders, disaffected youth, socially isolated older people and the long term unemployed. Care farming is growing in popularity, especially around Europe. This review aimed to understand the impact of care farming on quality of life, depression and anxiety, on a range of service user groups. It also aimed to explore and explain the way in which care farming might work for different groups. By reviewing interview studies we found that people valued, among other things, being in contact with each other, and feeling a sense of achievement, fulfilment and belonging. Some groups seemed to appreciate different things indicating that different groups may benefit in different ways but, it is unclear if this is due to a difference in the types of activities or the way in which people take different things from the same activity. We found no evidence that care farms improved people's quality of life and some evidence that they might improve depression and anxiety. Larger studies involving single service user groups and fully validated outcome measures are needed to prove more conclusive evidence about the benefits of care farming.

BackgroundThe UK government's implementation in 2008 of The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative in England provided a huge increase in the availability of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for the treatment of depression and anxiety in primary care. Counselling for Depression (CfD) -a form of person-centred experiential therapy (PCET) -has since been included as an IAPT-approved therapy but there is no evidence from randomised controlled trials determining its efficacy as required by the National Institute for Clinical and Social Excellence (NICE). Given the high demand for psychological therapies, there is a need for evidence of efficacy to ensure maximum practitioner resources are available to meet this need and to offer patients choice. We aimed to determine the clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness of PCET compared with CBT in the treatment of moderate and severe depression within the English IAPT delivery service model. MethodsWe conducted a pragmatic, non-inferiority randomised controlled trial of PCET vs. CBT for patients ≥18 years of age who met criteria for either moderate or severe depression as determined by the Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised version. We excluded participants presenting with an organic condition, psychosis, drug or alcohol dependence, or elevated clinical risk. Randomisation was carried out independent of the research team. Ethical approval was granted by the Health Research Authority (REC: 14/YH/0001). The trial registration ID is ISRCTN06461651 and the research protocol has been published. 510 patients were randomised (1:1) to PCET or CBT and were seen by appropriately trained