2.9 There are a number of factors which suggest that a simple comparison of PFI prisons with public prisons would not be comparing like for like. These include the different funding mechanisms, design and construction issues, and the problems of assessing relative costs (Appendix 3).
2.10 The methodology we adopted in analysing the large amount of data collected on the 21 prisons in our study is described in more detail in Appendix 4. We analysed pre-existing quantitative data in the form of performance against four Prison Service KPIs, qualitative data from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, Prison Service Area Managers' reports, and reports by the independent Boards of Visitors and our own surveys of prisoners and prison staff. We then collated this information in the form of a traffic-light structure which assesses the performance of individual prisons against this range of indicators and ranks them according to the number of red indicators. Figure 10 presents a summary of the traffic light ranking. Our traffic-light structure is similar to the approach used by the Prison Service when selecting prisons for performance testing.
2.11 This analysis may not provide a complete picture of prison performance but it does highlight those prisons which would appear to be giving cause for concern as well as those which perform consistently well against a range of indicators. It shows that PFI prisons are generally performing well, with one exception.