Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


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.


4   See Appendix 3 Back


 
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