NineSquared worked with The Right Direction Australia to help them estimate the costs and benefits of providing training to adolescents in youth detention centres. The training, which is delivered by veterans of the Australian Defence Force is designed to help young offenders in detention improve their communication and social skills.
The Right Direction sought to develop a case for their work that could be provide the basis for on-going discussions with Government and other philanthropic funding agencies. Funding from these agencies would allow The Right Direction to expand their training footprint and offer more youth access to their program. We undertook to assist them in this endeavour by developing a high level assessment of the potential costs and benefits of The Right Direction program which could then be used as part of their case for additional funding.
Our approach included an assessment of the overall cost of program delivery. Importantly, it also sought to understand the outcomes of similar programs and to determine the likely impact of the work being delivered by The Right Direction. In particular, we estimated the long term impact of discouraging even a small number of youth offenders from a career in crime. These impacts can be significant and include the reduction in future criminal activity together with reductions in the costs associated with police investigation and the justice system and the cost of inceration.
Importantly, the benefits of helping a young person to get the skills to participate in society in a lawful way, were found to far outweigh the cost of delivering the program.
NineSquared worked with The Right Direction as part of its program to give back to the community through our pro-bono program.
