Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
TUESDAY 20 JANUARY 1998
MR JOHN
HICKS, MR
HOWARD LOCKWOOD
AND MR
GEOFF DOBSON
120. Now, this is treatment imposed not by the
kind of mainstream Probation Service, as such, right, but by the
drug centres?
(Mr Hicks) Yes, that is right.
121. Are there enough of them around the country?
Do they work, and particularly do they work well for those who
are having to reside in one or those who are allowed only to attend?
Do you get feedback on how successful they are?
(Mr Hicks) We do. Geoff Dobson may want to comment
in a moment, but let me just read you an account because there
are some very good experiments around the country where I think
again, if you have got the chance to look at them, it would be
worth your while. This is a young man aged 23 who had been addicted
to heroin for about two years when he was arrested in 1997. The
police said that he was responsible for 520 burglaries during
that time, with 90 per cent of them in the London borough where
he lived. Following arrest, he was made subject to a scheme which
was a rehabilitation programme run by the Probation Service in
consultation with a drug programme.
122. Where?
(Mr Hicks) This is in south-east London. It involved
supervision by the Probation Service three times a week, contact
with the local police once a week. It involved twice-weekly drug
counselling from the local NHS community drug team and twice-weekly
random drug-testing. It was a very intensive form of work. The
urine-testing results confirmed that he was no longer physically
addicted to heroin and that he was consistently supplying clean
samples. The police and the Probation Service together were confident
at the end of the monitored programme that he was no longer offending.
Now, that is just one example, but there are examples like that
that say it can work, it can work.
(Mr Dobson) Perhaps I could just say a word. There
was a report published just a few weeks ago by the Inspectorate
of Probation called Tackling Drugs Together which looked
at the work done by probation officers in placing drug-misusing
offenders on programmes and which showed that up to 80 per cent
of drug-misusing offenders who had taken part in treatment programmes
appeared to be reducing or controlling their abuse. That is information
from the Inspectorate, not from ourselves, but from their examination
of the programmes that we link with. I think I would just make
one general point because I think it is important and it comes
from this which is that very often the probation officer and the
Probation Service are not in the role of delivering all the services
that are required to address the offending behaviour, but are
in the case manager role and that role in orchestrating and managing
a network of provision to protect the public is crucial.
123. But finally, more as a general observation,
would you agree with this proposition: that so far as our future
is concerned of crime in this country, the increase in drug-related
crime of both sorts is probably the greatest problem we have got
ahead of us?
(Mr Hicks) Yes.
Mr Allan
124. You briefly touched on programmes for women
earlier when we were talking about violent offenders. Are there
enough specific programmes for women in the Probation Service
at the moment?
(Mr Hicks) I think we are getting better. We are recognising
that you do need to have specific programmes for women offenders
and there has been a problem in resource terms because in the
development of funding of programmes, we have obviously focused
on the majority who are males and there are not always in any
given locality enough of the relatively serious women offenders
to constitute a group programme, but area by area they are developing
specific programmes for women. You have identified the problem
and it is one that we are tackling.
125. So women have been losing out because of
the tight resources, effectively is what you are saying?
(Mr Hicks) I think they have, yes.
126. And you are trying to improve matters?
(Mr Hicks) Yes, because, as I say, women are under-represented
in terms of the criminal population and they are dealt with differentially.
What we offer is used well by the courts, but I think the focusing
of resources is a tricky issue and it needs to be resourced properly
to do effective work.
127. Another situation which has been pointed
out to us by a Home Office research study is that sentencers are
inclined not to use fines for women offenders and will often give
them a non-custodial sentence, perhaps inappropriately, in other
words, give them a community sentence through your service rather
than give them a fine because they somehow feel that they do not
want to impose fines on women. Do you recognise that situation?
(Mr Hicks) Yes. It is more related to the Probation
Order because courts, I think, are more inclined to see women
as needing help and that is their image of some aspects of the
Probation Order. There are problems about the use of the Community
Service Order in which women are under-represented, partly because
courts tend to think it is not quite so appropriate. In our view
it is, and there are very specific contributions that the Community
Service Order can make to women offenders, but they do need to
be specialised provision by and large.
128. So, broadly speaking, women get more Probation
Orders than would be justified and fewer Community Service Orders
and fewer fines?
(Mr Hicks) Yes.
129. And you would prefer to see that situation
rectified in terms of giving the appropriate penalty for the appropriate
crime?
(Mr Hicks) I think the differentiation is more to
do with image than it is to do with the reality. The reality is
that it seems to me, by and large, women offenders should have
the same range of options available to them and should be reflected
more equally across the system, but it does require the service
providers to ensure that their provision is tuned to the specific
needs of women, that it takes account of their childcare and family
responsibilities, which apply in most cases, as a part of that
process.
130. And another group obviously who may have
particular problems is the ethnic minorities. Is that viewed within
the Probation Service as a specific client group with specific
requirements?
(Mr Hicks) Yes. The picture is reversed though because
ethnic minority groups are over-represented at every point in
the criminal justice process.
131. Over-represented?
(Mr Hicks) Over-represented, for a range of reasons
that you might wish to explore, but the result is that they are
significantly over-represented in the prison population.
132. Are they also over-represented within the
Probation Service?
(Mr Hicks) Yes, as a proportion of the population
and as a proportion controlled for offending patterns, so the
research suggests that they are dealt with differentially in a
way that exaggerates any difference in offending patterns.
133. The Home Office have told us that when
comparing the ethnic composition of those who are actually in
contact with you as against the composition of the general population,
the current aggregated information they have at the moment is
of "limited explanatory value". In other words, they
are not able to draw conclusions from looking at who is in contact
with you as against the general population. Is that something
that you recognise?
(Mr Hicks) Sorry, I am not quite sure I understand
the point.
134. In terms of the information that the Home
Office have told us they have got, they have said that they have
got no useful information which is able to compare the ethnic
composition of those who come into contact with the Probation
Service, in other words, looking at who is over- and under-represented
as against the population at large.
(Mr Hicks) I am rather surprised to hear that actually
because the monitoring of the ethnic composition of probation
workloads has been in place for some five or six years now and
there is very good information available about the ethnic composition
of the different forms of work we do, and section 95 of the 1991
Criminal Justice Act requires that level of monitoring of the
work of every criminal justice service, so the same should be
true for other services as well.
135. You believe there is useful information
there as to which sentences are being awarded to which ethnic
groups?
(Mr Hicks) Yes, I believe there is. We could follow
that up, if it is of interest, and see what data we can actually
supply.[5]
Mr Allan: It would be useful to know.
Mr Winnick
136. In order to clarify the situation, when
you say that the ethnic minority groups are over-represented in
prisons, you are not suggesting that someone who comes from a
minority group is going to face a more severe sentence than someone
who comes from the majority group? Is that the implication?
(Mr Hicks) No. The Afro-Caribbean groups are over-represented
and Asian groups are under-represented. There are differences
between different ethnic minority groups. There are a range of
processes and Mr Lockwood may want to comment further in a moment,
but one is that there is a higher level of mistrust of the criminal
justice process by certain ethnic minority groups. They are much
more inclined to plead "not guilty". Now, one of the
consequences of that is that they will be less likely to get a
pre-sentence report before sentence, and another consequence is
that they will get less discount for the guilty plea, so those
two factors alone account for the fact that the figures show more
will get custodial sentences and they will get slightly longer
custodial sentences simply as a result of those two factors.
137. But all penal policies, be it in this country
or another country for that matter, work surely on the common
logical assumption that those who are at the bottom of the pile,
whether they are ethnic minorities or otherwise, are more likely
to commit offences than people who are rich and prosperous. That
is a fact of life, is it not?
(Mr Hicks) Well, there is a social factor to it, but
the figures that I am talking about have been studied closely
and are controlled in relation to the volume of offending, so
that even if you are talking about a comparison of like groups
with like groups, this difference still emerges.
Mr Hogg
138. My question has now been covered by what
Mr Hicks was saying in answer to Mr Malins, but could we just
ask the witnesses to give us a note on this because it is actually
quite interesting as to how the different ethnic groups are disposed
of through the criminal justice process and the why.
(Mr Hicks) We will happily do that.
(Mr Lockwood) I would just make one point, that I
think it would be very difficult to say which agency in the criminal
justice system makes a point of over-representing, but the end
product is that all the agencies bring about a difference in relation
to ethnic minorities and from the point of arrest, through to
the court, through to the subsequent sentencing, it leads to an
over-representation, so we all ought to look out for this.
Mr Malins
139. What proportion of probation officers are
from an ethnic minority background?
(Mr Hicks) I do not have the figure with me. In certain
urban areas it is higher than the proportion in the population,
but we can give you that figure afterwards.
5 See Appendix 3 Back
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