Recruitment will be spaced over the entire year in order to identify any impact of seasonality on

participants’ experience, activities and outcomes. Ideally offenders should be recruited and baseline measures taken prior to start their community Gambogic acid selleck order placement. However, this will be dependent on a number of factors including the speed at which placements start after sentencing, and the logistics of integrating research processes within and across multiple probation sites. We will work with probation services and care farm/comparator site staff to establish the most appropriate and feasible time to recruit. The possibility of incentivising offenders to take part in the study will be discussed with probation staff. Recruitment will be conducted face to face by a research assistant. Informed consent will be obtained to take part in the study and also independently to access personal information from the probation and police services. Participation in the study will not be contingent on granting permission to access personal data. Assessing feasibility of these recruitment targets, establishing research procedures and identifying the optimal recruitment processes is a key element

in this study. Follow-up Measures for offenders attending the care farm and comparator location will be taken at both the start and completion of their community order placement. If the offender has not completed their placement during the 1 year recruitment period, they will be followed up for 6 months from the start of their order, regardless of whether they have completed their order or placement. If an offender does not comply with the requirements of their order and is categorised by the Probation

Services as having ‘breached’, they will be followed up at the end of their subsequent community order or at the end of the follow-up period. If they are given a prison sentence, they will be noted as ‘lost to follow up’ for the quality of life, health and well-being measures, however their reoffending outcome can be assessed. As a preference, follow-ups will be conducted face to face as close to the end of their placement as possible. However, the unpredictability of community orders, particularly changes to placements Carfilzomib and variable completion rates, may necessitate postal follow-up. In these instances a financial incentive to return the questionnaire will be offered to maximise response rates. Confounders While not all confounders are measurable and may not be relevant as they do not introduce bias into the assessment process, the pilot study and systematic review will identify a list of relevant confounders and ways of measuring these.