Last Thursday the Government announced that HMP Birmingham (capacity 1400) will be privatised. The announcement sent out a mixed message about the government's commitment to ‘break the cycle' of the rising prison population.

HMP Birmingham is a huge (one of the largest in Europe) and challenging jail. Operationally, privatisation can be risky. Private companies run prisons more cheaply by typically having lower paid and non-unionised staff. This can mean a less experienced workforce which in a smaller, less challenging prison may not be so problematic but exposes us to uncharted and potentially unsafe territory in a much larger prison like Birmingham. The threat of wildcat strikes by angry staff is greater. Putting the army on standby makes it even worse (ask yourself how might an 18 year old soldier trained for war deal with a self-harming heroin addict, for example?)

To make less use of prison and focus more on effective and tough community measures which reduce reoffending, the government needs first and foremost to create conditions in which prison is not the default choice for an offence, but a last resort. Unfortunately privatisation is likely to have the opposite effect because it creates conditions in which building new prisons is easier. This in turn fuels continued overuse of prison and makes decommissioning prisons and reduction of the use of prison harder. The move sends out a mixed message: government states that it would like to see a reduction in the prison population but then creates conditions where the opposite effect is more likely.

The way to reduce costs is not through tinkering by switching providers, especially if there is a medium-term risk of increased demand. It is to stem the flow of people towards the final destination of the journey through the criminal justice system - custody. In our work at the Young Foundation we look for ways to stem this flow at the transition points of this journey. Work on Emotional Resilience for young people at risk of gang-style behaviour, for example, offers training for vulnerable young people who are in danger of becoming criminals. The crucial transition points are where provision is often disjointed and individuals are at greater risk of falling through the cracks and onto the next level of escalation. These are: the point of first entry into the system when someone is arrested, the point of transition between youth and adult services, the point of sentence and the point of release.

It is at these moments when providers (state, third sector and private contractors) can have the most impact in de-escalating an individual's involvement in the criminal justice system, so that they need not progress onto the next stage, which is more costly. The key here is anticipating the transition, preparing for it and managing it. This can mean restorative justice approaches and diversion of people with mental health problems by the police, a problem-solving approach by sentencers, clear integration and co-commissioning of provision by youth and adult services and when it comes to it, pre-release mentoring and through the gates support for those who do end up in custody.

The six Transforming Justice pilots, announced in December's Green Paper "Breaking the Cycle", aim to address the transition points that have been identified and hopes to establish viable alternatives to traditional prisons. We are working with the City of Manchester Council and the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities on the planning of one of the six pilots, which is making progress in re-wiring the way entire areas approach solutions to crime and focus intensely on prevention and de-escalation, thereby reducing cost to the taxpayer of locking up many people whose offending can be addressed earlier in the cycle.