A Critical Reflection on Social Impact Bonds

Urban Farm DB summary

Published 1 May 2018. The authors argue that Social Impact Bonds look like an ideology-neutral financing fix but carry significant technical problems and a troubling ideological shift. At the time of writing the UK had 32 SIBs; government had put in $28 million in 2012 and a further $113.4 million through the Life Chances Fund in 2016, with the UK market predicted to reach $1.4 billion by 2020, while the US had at least 10 SIBs and 19 more existed across 14 other countries. The Peterborough prison SIB's initial result was an 8.4 per cent reduction in reoffending. They find little evidence that SIBs encourage innovation, note the heavy administrative burden, and contend that prioritising investor returns over service users turns citizens into commodities.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 32 deals

  deal count(uk social impact bonds)

  PolicyControl: at least 10 in the United States and 19 across 14 other countries

  region

  United Kingdom

  year

  2018

  method

  social impact bonds established in the UK as of the article date

• 113.4 million_usd↑ Increase

  life chances fund commitment(uk social impact bond policy)

  EconomicsControl: $28 million allocated in 2012

  region

  United Kingdom

  year

  2016

  method

  UK government commitment through the Life Chances Fund

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Policy and governanceContradictsWith caveats
• Equity / gentrificationContradictsWith caveats