Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
TUESDAY 20 JANUARY 1998
MR JOHN
HICKS, MR
HOWARD LOCKWOOD
AND MR
GEOFF DOBSON
Mr Malins
100. That is what I am talking about, not people
after they have committed a crime, but people where there is a
warning bell. The Probation Service, in my experience, has got
a lot of very good people on it who actually have got a bit of
experience of real life and they know what it is like to be in
a police station and they may have an important role to play in
this connection.
(Mr Hicks) What I think I am saying is to agree with
the point in principle, but to develop it further because I think
what you are identifying might be offered by the Probation Service,
if the youth offender teams are developed in the way that some
are very good on the ground now, there will be a range of sources
of assistance, advice and informed advice that builds on precisely
what you are talking about, experience of what happens in the
courts, knowledge about how behaviour develops and so on, and
the role envisaged for the youth offender teams is not just about
dealing with young people who are convicted, but it is to deal
with those people who are seen to be showing the signs of getting
on a path that will lead in that direction and it is, therefore,
a broader role, including nipping things early, identifying risks
early where it is clear that that is what you are dealing with,
and an exchange of understandings so that people in the education
field can draw on the expertise of people who work in the criminal
justice field, not just us, but the police and others.
Chairman
101. Youth offenders is the one area where public
confidence is at its lowest, where public confidence in the ability
of the criminal justice system to cope is at its lowest. Do you
recall the research, I think, by the Northumbria Police that a
tiny handful of individuals were responsible for an enormous proportion
of the crime and that if you could remove those from public circulation,
life for everybody would get better? Do you remember that piece
of research?
(Mr Hicks) I do indeed. It was at the time when there
was a lot in the press about an individual they called "Rat
Boy".
102. Yes, well, that is one example. Do you
agree with it?
(Mr Hicks) The Northumbria research has been replicated
more widely and it is known, and I have got the statistic here,
but I cannot actually locate it, but please just give me one moment—
103. Do not worry about that now. What I am
asking you is do you agree with it?
(Mr Hicks) Yes. One per cent of males who are convicted
of six or more offences before the age of 17 accounted for 60
per cent of all offending, so there is a clustering, that is absolutely
right.
104. So you agree with the gist of that?
(Mr Hicks) It is the corollary that I was going to
respond to.
105. Let us take it stage by stage. There is
a shortage, is there not, of secure facilities, if you are talking
about locking up this tiny minority of people? One of the results
is that, say, someone who offends in Sunderland might find themselves
locked up as far away as Brentwood, which is not much use if you
are trying to bring them into touch with their families or their
community.
(Mr Hicks) Precisely.
106. So is this problem being addressed, the
shortage of secure detention facilities for young, hardened criminals?
(Mr Hicks) I think the proposals about which the Government
is currently consulting include the question of secure facilities
for young people and our view would be what I think I infer from
your question, that you need to have secure facilities as part
of your armoury, that they need to be available in a way that
they do not take people to the other end of the country, and that
the way in which the regimes in those secure facilities are run
means that they are properly integrated with arrangements in the
local community so you do not just lock somebody up at that age
and forget them, but you actually manage their return to the community
properly.
107. No, because if you are going to rehabilitate
someone, you have first got to engage their attention.
(Mr Hicks) Yes.
108. If they are forever running over the wall
or disappearing, you cannot do that.
(Mr Hicks) There needs to be a way of holding people
and we do not dispute the notion that there is a place for secure
facilities in extreme circumstances.
109. Now, I am a bit troubled, and I appreciate
you are not the Government, but I am a bit troubled to hear you
say that the Government are consulting about this because I thought
that secure training centres on a regional basis had been announced
several times over by the last Government and perhaps by this
one as well.
(Mr Hicks) They were and there are six specific centres
that have been established and are part of the estate, but it
is still the case that there are very few and they are only in
some parts of the country. Our concern would be that even with
that new provision on-stream, there is still a problem.
110. Is it not on-stream yet?
(Mr Hicks) I am not sure I know the answer to that
question.[4]
I am advised not.
111. Not yet, so that is one thing that is a
pre-condition in a way for dealing with this core group of young
offenders, is that right, and until it is, we have got a problem,
have we not?
(Mr Hicks) It would be, in our view, part of the integrated
range of provision that needs to be available.
112. And until it is up and running, we have
got a problem, have we not?
(Mr Hicks) Yes. The fact that the new secure centres
have not yet come on-stream is part of the problem. The other
part of the problem is that the secure facilities available for
young people are provided by, I think, half a dozen different
public authorities, some health, some Prison Service, some local
authority services, and they need to be brought together into
one whole so that the arrangements for holding young people are
integrated to the arrangements for working effectively with them
close to their local community.
113. Can I just take up one point in relation
to diversion? It is not just a question, is it, of singling out
a few individuals who are likely to be potential criminals, but
recognising that there are whole environments where young people
are more likely to drift into crime than in others, and there
is, therefore, a range of schemes, or am I right in thinking that
a range of schemes already exists, although it is not properly
funded, for example, providing youngsters with something useful
to do during school holidays or out-of-school hours? Is it your
view that this is not sufficiently developed?
(Mr Hicks) I think we have tended to use the term
"diversion" a little more narrowly than that. In broad
terms, provision for young people in the school holidays is part
of a good community provision that is related to crime prevention,
if you like, keeping people occupied when there might be other
things tempting to do, actually helping people broaden their experience
when they might just hang around for the school holidays. I think
our focus on diversion has been on things like better information
and on victim-offender mediation. I would just like, if I might,
to explore the Thames Valley experience which is a very good example
and I am sure you have had submissions about that.
114. I think we may be going to deal with that
in a minute, but I will just check first of all, to try to keep
to some sort of order. We are intending to go and see that. We
are aware of it, so can I suggest that we leave that. By all means,
refer to it briefly if you want to, but we are going to go and
see it.
(Mr Hicks) Good. Well, I think it is relevant for
young people because the evidence that you will see shows that
working with the victim produces good results both for the offender
and for the victim and that it relates to the way in which victims
perceive offenders and their fear of crime for the future and
it makes a very real impact on the individual offender. I will
not read the case study perhaps because you will probably get
that when you go to see Thames Valley. It is replicated across
the country. Thames Valley have done a super job in making it
high profile, but it is around in many probation services across
the country as well. It goes back in West Yorkshire, for example,
to 1984, so there is a lot of experience—
115. So you could name other good examples of
that, besides Thames Valley?
(Mr Hicks) Yes, there are and if you wanted, I could
supply afterwards a list of examples.
116. Yes, we would be interested in that.
(Mr Hicks) We were quite interested because family
group conferencing is another kind of dimension of this victim-offender
work and those who are promoting it a couple of years ago said
it came from the Maoris. People went and talked to the Maoris
and they said that it came from New South Wales. The people in
New South Wales said, "We got it from the West Yorkshire
Probation Service"!
Chairman: Well, that is the trail we can follow
on some other occasion. We now go on to substance misusers.
Mr Malins
117. Mr Hicks, how would you judge success in
dealing with drug addicts or drug misusers and how successful
are you?
(Mr Hicks) It is a very big problem. The problem,
I think, is about trying to break the link between drug misuse,
which is at root a health problem, and crime and the figures show
that there is a very strong link at the moment, as you are probably
aware, and that is evidenced on every probation officer's caseload
both in terms of drug offending as an offence in its own right
and offending to feed the drug habit, which is a growing and a
serious problem. It is the factor that has led probation officers
in my service to say to me for the first time I have ever heard
it in the last two or three years, "I am actually afraid.
I am actually afraid because I am dealing with people who, in
pursuing their drug habit, are no strangers to serious violence,
are known on occasions to carry arms and will travel big distances
to get drugs". Now, I have not heard probation officers talk
in those terms until relatively recently. I think the key is about
breaking the link and the evidence of some of the pilot work that
is the run-in to the Drug Treatment and Testing Order is that
the link can be broken and that the notion of open access to testing,
which we support and endorse, works so long as it is seen that
the testing is part of the health side of the equation. The Drug
Treatment and Testing Order will only work if it is a collaborative
environment of work between probation services, the police and
health services, and the pilot scheme that was run in Devon for
the past three years produced some very good evidence that, conducted
in the right way, you can break the link, you can actually attend
to the drug problem and you can see some change in offending behaviour.
118. When you come before the court, and perhaps
you are not the most hardened of addicts, but you are nearly there,
it is possible, is it not, to have a Probation Order with a condition
of attendance at a drug centre?
(Mr Hicks) Yes.
119. Is it possible to have a condition of residence
of one?
(Mr Hicks) Yes, in certain circumstances it can, if
that is deemed to be necessary.
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