About PRISM-R

The name

PRISM-R stands for remand disparity intelligence. It is a prism in the ordinary sense: a single instrument that takes one question, the over-representation of minority-ethnic children on remand, and separates it into the decisions that produce it. The R is remand.

Prevention informatics

PRISM-R is a piece of prevention informatics: the use of open data to locate where a harm is generated, so that effort can be directed there rather than at its symptoms. Remand disproportionality is treated as a prevention failure. By the time a child is remanded, a sequence of earlier decisions has already taken place. PRISM-R makes that sequence visible.

The tool is empirical and deliberately narrow. It shows co-occurrence, not causation. It does not model individual children, and it does not make recommendations. Its purpose is to show, accurately and openly, where disparity enters the road to remand.

Who produces it

PRISM-R is produced by Oxon Advisory and hosted on Prevention Works, a community of practice in prevention. It sits alongside other Prevention Works tools as part of a shared approach to open, evidence-led prevention work.

Independence

PRISM-R is independent of government, of the Youth Justice Board, and of any commissioned client. It is not funded to reach a conclusion. All of its data is drawn from publicly available sources, every one of which is listed on the methods page with its retrieval date. The code and the processed data are public, so the analysis can be checked and reproduced by anyone.

Contact

Enquiries about PRISM-R can be directed to Oxon Advisory at admin@oxonadvisory.com. The source repository is at github.com/SGilr/prism-r, where issues and corrections are welcome.