Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 399)
TUESDAY 3 FEBRUARY 1998
MR PAUL
CAVADINO, PROFESSOR
ANDREW RUTHERFORD
AND MR
ROB ALLEN
Mr Winnick
380. If I may just interrupt there, Chairman,
I do recall research for example by the Northumbrian police among
others that said that within their region there were 14 or 15
persistent young offenders whose offences ran to many hundreds
each and were they to be locked away very securely there would
be a significant diminution in the local crime rate. It is therefore
possible to identify some of those, is it not?
(Mr Allen) I think that the difficulty is having the
knowledge at the material time. The research I am talking about
was done by the Policy Studies Institute which looked at a number
of definitions of persistence and found that by using them you
identified rather different youngsters each time, so although
in general it is true that a large amount of crime is committed
by relatively small numbers of people, in practice being able
to identify those youngsters before the event is much more complicated
than I think the Northumbrian police were suggesting.
Mr Allan
381. The other issue of public confidence
that is often raised is that of language, and the Home Secretary
himself raised it at the recent National Probation Convention.
In particular, community service has been targeted as something
which suggests a voluntary service rather than a punishment, and
obviously the oft-quoted comment again from the newspapers is
that so-and-so "walked free from court to a probation order",
whereas ACOP were quite clear that if they had got a probation
order "they ain't entirely free". I wonder how important
you feel language is and how far changes could be made in that
direction.
(Professor Rutherford) Language may be important but
on the other hand we have had these terms now. Probation goes
back to the early part of this century. The 1907 Statute brought
probation in. It is not exactly a totally new term. The community
service order again means something. What is important is not
going down if I may say again the American approach to community
penalties, which is largely speaking to replicate aspects of the
prison within the community. That is the danger. One of the advantages
of the heritage of the probation service in this country and its
values and so on, one of the advantages of the terminology that
we have, is that it does not easily fit within the more American
model. I was in the States this summer looking at probation programmes
and the big issue there is whether or not probation officers should
carry hand guns and this is what they were all arguing about.
Most probation areas have decided to do just that. When they talk
about public protection in America they are talking about protecting
themselves as they see it in the front line of work in difficult
urban situations. There are still fortunately some very important
differences between ourselves and the United States in terms of
our approach to public policy issues on crime. There has been
a danger—I think Mr Howard started it but Mr Straw may be
continuing it—of seeing America as somehow having a whole
lot of useful lessons to pass on in relation to dealing with the
crime issue. You have only got to be in the United States for
10 minutes to realise that America does not have much to teach
the rest of the world in terms of dealing with crime at all. They
have a huge crime problem and one of the reasons for that is the
massive neglect of social crime prevention. The Clinton people
are now beginning to talk about trying to address some of the
underlying reasons for crime and looking at sensible programmes
for dealing with young children and others. What we have seen
by contrast in America is this massive investment in prisons and
running alongside that an increasing number of people placed under
highly mechanistic forms of community supervision with all sorts
of new paraphernalia and to some extent new terminology going
along with it. There is a danger of simply inventing tough sounding
words to describe probation that could take us in this American
drift in terms of penal policy which would be I think unfortunate
to say the least.
(Mr Cavadino) Although I think language can have only
a limited impact on these issues, the probation service was right
some years ago to stop using the term "client" rather
than "offender" because it did give a misleading impression.
The customer of their efforts obviously is the community and in
another sense it is the courts. I have no objection personally
to replacing the term "community service order" with
"work order" or something similar, or replacing "probation
officer" with "community justice officer", but
I think there is a limit to what good that would do. It is significant
that community service is actually the most widely understood
(and, because of that, supported) non-custodial penalty when you
look at public surveys, because people have a rough idea of what
it is supposed to mean. As far as probation is concerned they
have not got a clue what it means and I think simply calling someone
a community justice officer rather than a probation officer will
mean that they still do not have a clue what that means. What
needs to be done is to have much more information about the content
of what is done rather than just changing names.
382. A timely contribution on the American
example is that the Home Secretary is learning all about it today
and I think the probation service should be told about any hand
gun proposals so they can ready themselves as an alternative when
people break their probation orders. What was interesting in the
British Crime Survey which you have already mentioned was the
fact that the public had a perception that the sentences that
were handed down were more lenient than is actually the case.
Do you see any way in which that can be addressed? The public
clamour is for tougher sentences, set against a survey which is
telling us that those tough sentences are already there if only
they knew about them. How do we deal with that?
(Mr Allen) The research has suggested that there has
been a neglect of communication strategies for getting the true
position across and suggests that new technology and all of that
should be used to get into the public domain very much more regular
and systematic information about sentencing and sentencing guidelines
and the sorts of sentences that are passed. Whether the Government
or some other organisation would want to organise a campaign to
improve public understanding is one possibility. I think it is
a priority because the question of policy being influenced by
what politicians think the public want is obviously been a crucial
driver of policy. If what the public want is formulated on the
basis of partial understanding of the current position, there
is a real danger of the kind of escalation that Professor Rutherford
is talking about, and what the researchers who did this were clear
about (and it is there for reference) was that we have had enough
playing to the gallery and what is needed is a real consolidating
effort, and clearly politicians have an important role and this
Committee has an important role through this inquiry to ensure
that people have a good picture of what is going on and are not
forming their opinions on the basis of misunderstanding.
Chairman
383. May I put one point to you which has
been put to us by other witnesses and it was touched on a moment
ago, that during the seventies and eighties the probation service
lost its way to some extent and came to think that its client
was the criminal rather than the taxpayer. Do you think there
is something in that?
(Mr Cavadino) Yes, but I think the extent to which
it happened has been exaggerated in some of the evidence you have
received. Nevertheless, I think there was a flavour of that in
some of the things that were happening in the probation service
at that time. It no longer is the case.
Mr Howarth
384. Clearly the problem that you have is
that if you have been playing to the gallery you have been singularly
unsuccessful because the fact is that the public has very little
confidence in non-custodial sentences. Seventy nine per cent of
people think that they are too lenient. It seems to me that rather
than ceasing to play to the gallery you ought to be much more
concerned to tell people what is going on. I am encouraged by
what Professor Rutherford said about the fact that there is plenty
of scope for community service, and I wondered whether it should
not be more visible to the public that offenders are undertaking
a service. Perhaps if you do not change the name you might at
least identify them as people who are undergoing punishment because,
as Mr Singh said, what the public wants to see is some punishment.
(Professor Rutherford) Again you see it in the States
now. You did not see it a few years ago, but this summer—and
I am talking about the eastern seaboard, not the deep south—I
was struck by offenders clearly marked with the word "Offender"
on their back, on their tee-shirt, out there in the middle of
the highway with a truck waiting for them which again said "Offender
Transport". All this imagery is there: "These are offenders"
being reinforced. You see some of the southern states now re-introducing
the chain gang and so on, public degradation ceremonies of one
sort or another. There is a public understanding issue. I am not
disagreeing with you for one moment. This also touches on a point
that the Chair was making just now about what it is probation
has to offer and how might it best do it. My sense is that the
community service orders that work best are the ones where the
offender actually feels he or she is involved in doing something
useful, something that actually is paying back to society something
that is needed. Offenders for example who have worked painting
old people's homes—and this has been one of the schemes—have
then got into a relationship with the residents of that community
and often something quite useful has come out of that. Going back
to the probation order, the supervision order, the relationship
again that has developed between the probation officer and the
offender is something that is very important and something that
needs to be held on to. One of the big regrets in the United States
of the probation officers I met this summer was that they have
lost that. They are now dealing with supervision caseloads in
the hundreds. The average caseload size in some of the Eastern
States we are talking about is 160 to 200 people under the supervision
of one probation officer and there is clearly no opportunity for
any sort of individual relationship to develop at all. It was
a very mechanistic, often done by telephone, remote sort of supervision
at best. It is how you allow people to work in a professional
way that really tries to address the crime problem that the offender
is presenting and it is a difficult one, as you say, as to how
you actually convince the public that that is effective work and
it is a job the Probation Service and other people who are involved
with probation probably need to give a great deal of thought to.
385. I just feel that if people saw known
offenders were actually doing something like sweeping the streets
or, for example, removing graffiti from public places or, even
worse, removing graffiti from London Underground trains, somehow
people would feel that there was an element of punishment and
also an element of good work rather than simply banging them up
in gaol at great expense, that here was something that was tangible.
It seems to me to be quite common ground amongst everybody that
there is a role for non-custodial sentencing. The question is
just how effective it is, and certainly the public perception
is that it is not effective. I wonder if you could give us some
ideas of how you think this could be done more visibly?
(Mr Allen) I do not think necessarily visibility means
putting offenders in uniform in the strict sense of the term "visibility".
Clearly there is a problem communicating to people what community
service means, whatever we call it, that it does precisely involve
the sorts of tasks that you are describing. So I think there is
a task for the Probation Service in ensuring that the jobs that
people do on community service orders are of genuine community
benefit and of understandable benefit to people and meet the concerns
of local communities, perhaps the local communities where the
offender lives. So there may well be a case for a more localised
application of community service, and I think that the Probation
Service needs to work very closely with local community and voluntary
organisations in setting up the kinds of placements that do meet
the needs. That does not necessarily mean that you have gangs
of people in uniform but it does mean that the local parish magazine
says that the grounds of the church were cleared by offenders
on community service; it does actually get into the life of the
community.
386. And a picture in the local newspaper
with the faces blanked out perhaps or a strip across the eyes
or something?
(Mr Allen) Yes, or receiving some record of achievement
at the end of the process or whatever it might be.
387. Could I ask one brief question on this.
It was something that Professor Rutherford said which I thought
was interesting. He used the words "public humiliation"
in response to Mr Singh, which he felt would deter some people,
the thought of being publicly humiliated, and by definition a
lot of people are not humiliated. I wondered to what extent our
witnesses today would take the view of somebody like Digby Anderson,
who believes that there ought to be more stigma attached, more
shame attached to wrong-doing, and this itself may act as a deterrent
to wrong-doing?
(Professor Rutherford) Going down the road of shaming
penalties of one sort or another?
388. I think it is more a question of society
taking a more robust attitude and being more prepared to regard
it as shameful and to stigmatise those who have committed offences.
(Professor Rutherford) I was arguing that for most
people that is probably a very important deterrent. That would
be their main concern. This is why, for example, the most minor
theft, thank goodness, is still dealt with as either way indictable
and you have the option of going before a jury. To be convicted
of an offence of dishonesty is something that most people would
regard as a matter of great shame and so on and so forth. So these
things are important and there are academics out there, John Braithwaite
of Australia, for example, who argue that shaming should play
a much greater role in our thinking about crime and punishment.
There clearly are some societies out there, particularly in the
Middle East and so on, that take this idea very seriously indeed
with amputations and other forms of permanent shaming.
389. It certainly works, does it not?
(Professor Rutherford) It certainly works in the sense
that it says something about the sort of society it is and the
value it places on its members. I have not heard, for example,
in this country a serious argument in favour of penal amputation
because that would simply, I think, reach that point beyond which
people in this society would say that is simply not acceptable
as a way of proceeding.
Mr Winnick
390. Did it reduce criminality in this country
in previous centuries with the stocks and all the other forms
of public humiliation? Was Britain almost a crime-free society
in those days?
(Professor Rutherford) Britain was not a crime-free
society.
(Mr Allen) The pickpockets were most active during
public executions, by all accounts. Could I add on the shaming
point that a key part of the criminological thinking about shaming
is that it is important but it needs to be a re-integrative shaming
rather than a stigmatising shaming. That might sound like a nice
academic point but if you just shame with a view to labelling
somebody as a bad lot you are actually storing up trouble and
reducing the ability of that person to retake his or her place
in society as a non-offending citizen, which is what we are all
after in this exercise. If you combine getting an offender to
see where he has done wrong, this is where the restorative justice
approach has some strengths, particularly if they see the consequences
for the individual human being who has suffered at their hands,
are required to make apology, to compensate that person, maybe
apologise in person to him or her, but also you are looking at
what needs to happen, whether it is finding work, going on a training
scheme so that they can read and write and get work, address their
drug problems, alongside that, then you have a powerful package
which both shames the person but attempts to increase their stake
in behaving well in the future, and we would argue for that balanced
approach.
Mr Singh
391. I want to understand this point. Am
I correct in saying that, as Mr Linton said, there is a 57 per
cent. reconviction rate for community penalties? Is that correct?
(Mr Allen) I think that is the latest Home Office
figure, the aggregate figure within two years of community sentence
being imposed.
392. That is the reconviction rate?
(Mr Allen) That is reconviction.
393. What, in your opinion, then is the
re-offending rate? If 57 per cent. are being reconvicted in court,
what is the re-offending rate, in your view?
(Mr Allen) It is virtually impossible to make a stab
at that.
394. Hazard a guess.
(Mr Allen) It is possible that 57 per cent. of the
people are reconvicted but they commit more offences than those
for which they are convicted, or it is possible that a percentage
of the 43 per cent. who are not convicted are also committing
offences. Some of your previous witnesses have alluded to the
relatively low detection rate, suggesting that this 57 per cent.
figure is necessarily, in the real world, an under-estimate of
all the offending that is going on by people previously under
community supervision, but I think it is likely that some of those
57 per cent. will have committed other offences in addition.
(Mr Cavadino) Clearly some people who are not reconvicted
are likely to have committed offences. We do not know how many
but clearly some are likely to have. That is also true of people
who have come out of custody. The number who actually re-offend
is likely to be higher than the number who are reconvicted. So
the reconviction rates for both custodial and community penalties,
which are disappointingly high, in reality probably mask a higher
re-offending rate and that underlines the need to try and improve
both in the ways that we have suggested.
395. The point I wish to make is that I
think we can assume the re-offending rate is going to be much
higher than the 57 per cent. reconviction rate. I think we can
take that as an assumption, in which case these community penalties
have failed entirely, if you get into a figure of nearly three-quarters,
to protect the public from crime from these offenders, whereas
if they had been in prison at least the public would have been
protected from re-offending at that level. Would you accept that?
(Mr Cavadino) That is a short-term valid argument,
that while the person is in prison, for what is often a short
period, he is not committing offences in the community. However,
you have to balance against that, if you are looking to the future,
how you can prevent re-offending in the long term, then adopt
a strategy which tries to improve the effectiveness of community
supervision by using the methods which have been shown to reduce
re-offending best and increase the effectiveness of prison regimes
by doing the same sort of things in prison.
Chairman:Let me stop you there. We are now going
backwards; we are now on question 2 again whereas I had hoped
we were going to move forward. Thank you very much. Mr Cranston?
Mr Cranston
396. I think Marsha Singh is making a very
valid point. We have these people coming to us every week, members
of our constituencies, complaining about offenders, and we also
know, and I know, for example, in my particular area on one particular
estate there are a couple of families who are persistent offenders
and yet they are still out there creating havoc. We have to confront
this issue every week. I take the same view as Mr Howarth, that
what we are trying to do on this Committee is identify non-custodial
sentences that work and that is where we need your help. I have
to say, with respect, that some of your evidence does not help
us. Unfortunately, we did not have your more detailed document.
It did not come until this morning and so we have not seen it,
but when Andrew Rutherford, for example, puts forward some of
the empirical evidence, I have to question it. You made a point
earlier about imprisonment rates in other European countries and
you quoted per capita. I did not come back to you at the
time but the argument is you do not look at per capita
imprisonment rates. You should be looking at the rate in terms
of the offending in that particular community, and if you look
at the amount of offending in this country compared with other
European countries, we do not have a very high imprisonment rate.
So I am saying that sometimes the arguments, with respect, are
not as strong as they can be and I would like you to identify
these more successful non-custodial approaches. Mr Allen, for
example, said there are some that deal with drug offenders or
alcohol problems, there are some that deal with sex offenders.
If you can identify those I think that would be extremely helpful.
Anyhow, I say all that by way of preface because I am supposed
to ask you about the appropriateness of some of these non-custodial
sentences, in particular in terms of completion rates. The evidence
is that a very substantial number do not complete, 30 per cent.,
I think. Is that not a matter of concern, that 30 per cent. of
the offenders sentenced do not complete their course/service hours?
(Professor Rutherford) If I could come in on this
question and come back in a way through your very interesting
preface, Mr Cranston, I think in a sense you are getting to the
heart of the issue here. The heart of the issue that you are raising
is, what impact does the criminal justice process have on the
level of crime. What do we know about the spread of sanctions
ranging from police detection all the way through the courts to
the prisons? What is the impact of all that upon the level of
crime? What we know from study after study is that it is relatively
marginal, that is to say, it is not surprising to find there is
not a great deal of difference between measuring probation or
community service as against prison, and you find this in other
parts of the world, too. What I think community penalties do above
all is that they point, for all of us, in the direction where
the solution to the problem of crime is likely to be, that is
to say, the solution to the problem of crime, the responses to
the crime issue, are likely to be within the community; they are
likely to have to do with a whole range of crime prevention initiatives.
Coming back to your question about the two families on the estate
and so on, no-one is arguing about the particular problems that
those individuals present now, as of today. That is an issue but
in a sense, taking a longer-term view of that estate, of the range
of issues there, people who have perhaps not been born at this
point, you are looking at a whole range of housing, education
and other issues that are absolutely crucial to the question of
crime. That is where I think America has gone so badly wrong and
the lesson that I hope Mr Straw will bring back from his seminar
today is that America has missed out on what might have been an
area of very productive social policy. They have turned their
back on all that and they have gone into this massive investment,
not just in prisons but in alternative sentences.
Mr Cranston:I think we agree with you on that
but when you criticise the Straw proposals I do not think you
are appreciating the perspective. The perspective was, first of
all, motivated by the fact that we as MPs have to confront this
issue. People are concerned. People quite rightly do not understand
what is being done at present but people are concerned. But the
second issue is this, that in terms of this concentration on youth
justice, this approach is trying to build on some empirical evidence
that suggests that if you get them early, if you say, "Look,
at 17 or 18, okay, fine, we will caution you once but if you do
it again you are really in serious problems," at the present
time that is not done. As I think one of us said before, there
are people out there with half a dozen, 12 convictions, who have
been up before the courts and nothing has ever been done. They
have been given these "soft options". I think your criticism
of the Crime and Disorder Bill is misconceived.
Chairman
397. Shall we deal with that in question
7? We are on question 6 at the moment.
(Mr Cavadino) I wonder if I could make a brief point
on that because I agree that the proposals for making greater
use of constructive diversion programmes, bail support programmes,
reparation programmes and intensive supervision programmes that
form part of the Government's approach to youth justice do hold
out the prospect of steering many people away from offending very
effectively. But on your broader question, which was about, what
is it that is more effective than the current way of supervising
offenders, you will find, when you have a chance to look at paragraph
25 of the paper I have submitted, that I give a number of very
detailed examples. For example, I have cited a supervision programme
that was working mainly with persistent burglars that reduced
the rate of re-offending by 16 per cent. more than other ways
of working with a similar group in a similar area; a motor project
dealing with persistent taking-and-driving-away offenders which
reduced the rate of re-offending by 38 per cent. more than other
ways of dealing with comparable offenders; restorative justice,
victim/offender mediation projects that reduced the rate of re-offending
by substantially more than that for comparable offenders dealt
with in other ways; sex offender treatment programmes which resulted
in a reconviction rate half that of similar offenders dealt with
without the same kinds of programmes; and also evidence about
drug treatment programmes working with drug-addicted offenders
which produced similar reductions. There are quite a lot of specific
examples that could be generalised more widely within the national
curriculum that we have suggested. On completion rates, I agree
with you that 30 per cent. is a high figure. It includes some
orders that are discharged early for satisfactory progress and
obviously that is a positive thing, but, of course, it also includes
people who have breached the order or re-offended during the order,
and the whole thrust of what we are saying is that we need to
find ways of improving the effectiveness of supervision to reduce
that.
398. I am very encouraged by the examples
you give. What about the argument that there should be stronger
sanctions against those who breach these orders? They have been
given the chance, they have not complied and now they should be
treated much more severely and at present they are not?
(Mr Cavadino) A high proportion of those who have
been breached receive a custodial sentence for breaching a non-custodial
sentence. Some do not and in other cases they are fined but the
court allows the sentence to continue. I think the court has to
make a judgment in each individual case. The national standards
for the supervision of offenders that were first introduced in
1992 and then re-issued in a revised form in 1995, laid down much
tighter standards than had existed before for the breach of people
who did not comply with orders. That means that some people, in
line with the national standards, are taken back to court for
breaches which are relatively minor but because, rightly, the
national standards have been tightened up they have to be taken
back to court, and there are instances in which I think it is
reasonable for a court to say, "In view of the whole situation
and in view of the progress which you had been making until you
breached the order by not turning up, we will allow the order
to continue so that the good work that is being done can be built
on, but we are going to fine you as punishment for not complying
with the order in this particular way at this particular time."
I think if you had a system which took away the court's discretion
and required them to send people into custody whatever the circumstances,
it would not necessarily be doing any favours to the cause of
reducing re-offending.
399. Did I understand you to say that in
the majority of cases a custodial penalty follows from breach
of the order?
(Mr Cavadino) I did not say in the majority of cases
because I do not know what the figure is. I did say in many cases.
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