APPENDIX 15
Note by Mr Graham W Smith CBE, HM Chief
Inspector of Probation
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO THE CLERK OF THE
COMMITTEE
I have delayed my response to your enquiry because
it seemed best to concentrate on only one issue, namely the means
by which community penalties could be made more effective and
thereby win the support and confidence of the general public and
sentencers. I have been awaiting publication of the HM Probation
Inspectorate's Strategies for Effective Offender Supervision better
known as the "What Works" Project and this week it has
finally been published. I am pleased to enclose it together with
a management summary for the attention of your Committee.
I am in no doubt personally that this is the
most important piece of work with which the Probation Inspectorate
has ever been involved. Put at its simplest it says that certain
community programmes involving the same population significantly
out-perform custodial sentences in reducing offending. Further
that a new statistical and research technique called meta-analysis
derived from medical research has allowed researchers both in
Europe and North America to comb hundreds of community programmes
and to identify common characteristics of success; and these characteristics
when pursued can reduce offending, by an overall level of 10 per
cent in terms of improvement over current figures and even more
in specific programme areas.
The enclosed volume is a difficult read; it
is the first part of a three-part attack on effectiveness carried
out jointly by the Home Office, the Association of Chief Officers
of Probation, Central Probation Committees and the Inspectorate.
It is a detailed and rigorous examination of the principles of
effective practice and looks at targeting, design, programme delivery
and general management issues. It has been able to satisfy independent
academic tests of reliability and validity in the programmes it
had studied.
This first volume will be followed by a second
which will be an Effective Practice Guide. This is aimed at practitioners
and management and aims to be something which will be easily assimilated
and accessible to all staff. I hope it will be on every worker's
desk. It will contain advice for managers to develop, provide
and quality assure effective supervision; for practitioners to
deliver and quality assure similarly and for managers and practitioners
responsible for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of
offender supervision. It will also include material to assist
managers and staff to be competent to do the work. It is planned
that a draft copy of this Guide will be available for the public
launch of this work at the end of February.
The third volume will be documentation on accreditation.
The "What Works" report sets a tough standard for probation
work with offenders. All of the available evidence suggests that
most probation supervision will need to be up-graded in order
to reach that standard. The Home Office wants to create a way
in which probation areas which attain that standard or make notable
strides towards it can demonstrate their progress to their local
courts, their probation committee and the Home Office. The Home
Office plans to introduce a system of accreditation for probation
supervision programmes which builds on the experience of the Prison
Service.
We cannot say yet how accreditation will work.
The proposals are at a very early stage of development but the
aim will be to ensure that programmes of supervision are reviewed
by independent experts and that the process of accreditation is
one which encourages and supports delivery of the very best work.
The accreditation process will examine both the content of a particular
programme and whether it is being run properly.
In conclusion therefore there is now a body
of evidence which exists which tells us how probation services
can be more effective in reducing offending. To use that evidence
properly the Service needs to distinguish carefully the method
selected for use, the offenders which they are used with and the
offender supervision actually provided. The evidence also suggests
that certain principles are associated with effective intervention
and these include risk management assessment, targeting offending
behaviour, addressing offenders' problems and criminogenic needs,
relevance to offenders' learning style and promoting community
re-integration whilst maintaining a quality and integrity of service.
The evidence also shows that most programmes
that have been reviewed so far by the Inspectorate do not meet
these tests for effective supervision and that our findings are
similar to those in North America and the rest of Europe. The
implementation challenge therefore, is very great. In addition
to what must be key counter-cultural and counter-intuitive features
which we must understand and overcome, it also appears true that
all of the players in the criminal justice system need to understand
the imperatives of the "What Works" research if it is
to succeed.
The good news of the study is that we did find
a number of probation programmes in England and Wales which were
already able to mostly achieve these principles and reduce offending.
"What Works" and its message is without doubt the most
important challenge facing the Probation Service and its implementation
will bring great rewards for the community in terms of its increased
protection and reduced offending.
"What Works" has other valuable spin-offs.
In the long term it should enable resources to be saved because
it will target them better. We also estimate that contact increases
by a factor of five from conventionally managed programmes. Staff
are used differentially and an impetus is given to the development
of partnership with the voluntary and private sectors. There is
also improved overall consistency making joint training more easy
to achieve.
Overall the atmosphere in which community penalties
exist is rendered more optimistic in a "What Works"
climate. This must be good news and goes against the pessimistic
hopeless "nothing works" environment which has been
such a negative but overriding perspecitve of criminal justice
in the past few years.
Finally there is one other matter that I would
like to draw to the Committee's attention and that is the importance
of reducing prison places for remand prisoners. This can be achieved
by the increased use and extension of bail information schemes.
Research has shown the schemes, together with bail support, are
strongly supported by the courts, the Crown Prosecution Service
and the police and reduce significantly unnecessary remands in
prison.
The Probation Service is finding it hard to
invest the necessary resources in this activity. There are fewer
bail information schemes than there were and hardly any bail support
for adults. They strongly need the commendation of this Committee
and encouragement to expand.
Graham W Smith
23 January 1998
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