Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440
- 461)
TUESDAY 3 FEBRUARY 1998
MR PAUL
CAVADINO, PROFESSOR
ANDREW RUTHERFORD
AND MR
ROB ALLEN
440. Never mind the Americans. We are not
interested in the Americans.
(Professor Rutherford) If you look at what other countries
are doing, France has always been very pragmatic and sensible
about these things. They take a view that what all youngsters
should have, what all of us should have but particularly youngsters,
is a holiday and many of the children you are describing perhaps
do not have a holiday and everybody recognises that. So the French
Government for years, regardless of their political persuasion,
have pumped money into local governments to do just that and these
holiday programmes have become a very important part of the French
summer for vast numbers of youngsters who would not otherwise
get a vacation. That seems to me to be self-evidently sensible
crime prevention or diversion (to use your term). It is one that
makes enormous sense and the resources somehow need to be diverted
away from some of these totally unproductive programmes that we
see in custodial institutions into that sort of crime prevention
activity. Social crime prevention is something that has been neglected,
and the danger with the runaway prison population, the costs that
that is dragging with it, is that more and more of these programmes
will get starved of resources.
(Mr Allen) There are some examples in this country
of these kinds of things.[2]
441. There is one in my constituency actually
called Breakout.
(Mr Allen) NACRO is involved in running things called
youth activities units where we work with local people to set
up after-school, weekend and holiday activities for at-risk youngsters,
so that when NACRO moves on to another estate the programme still
continues. So there is a strong programme of mentoring, trying
to link up youngsters who are at risk with adults who can provide
a good role model rather than the one you were describing, but,
as Professor Rutherford said, these things are patchy, they are
funded often on a year-to-year, if that, sort of basis—
442. Six-month to six-month, yes.
(Mr Allen)—because it does not fall within the
remit of any one agency. The police have set up some very good
schemes, the famous Space scheme in Staffordshire, which was a
holiday programme which did produce measurable results in terms
of crime, but the police are now enjoined not to devote their
resources to this sort of preventive work. Similarly with social
services, their statutory duties are such that putting money into
this prevention, although in the longer term it is the way forward,
is very difficult to do practically. So some kind of seed-corn
initiative to promote local prevention, inter-agency, involving
the schools, social workers, the police, working together, targeting
those youngsters—and in general terms we know the characteristics
of the ones who are going to be in difficulty—and getting
them involved offers real prospects of reducing crime in the medium
to long term.
443. At a much lower price?
(Mr Allen) Very much lower, and, sorry to mention
this but some of the American economists who have looked at comparing
the bite for your buck from incarceration policies with prevention
policies—this includes the Rand people, who are not noted
for being liberal—are much better—
444. Have we now found an area where you
are in agreement with our witnesses last week, because I recall
that Mr Coad did say that he would rather we spent a great deal
more of the probation effort concentrated on the youngest actual
and potential offenders—I hope I am not misrepresenting
him —but the other half of his equation was that we locked
up more of the other kind. I am not asking you to subscribe to
the second part but you subscribe to the first part of it, do
you not?
(Mr Allen) Yes. As an American said to me once, "It's
the children, stupid." If we are serious about crime it is
about focusing attention on children and those who are most at
risk and that does need resourcing. I think what we have tried
to say today is that a harsher approach at the other end is not
necessary and will not necessarily be effective. The problem is
it starves the earlier interventions because it is so costly,
so not only is it not working very well but it is drawing money
from the sorts of approaches that could work better.
(Mr Cavadino) An important point about cost, though,
is cost-effectiveness and some of the research in the United States
has indicated that the kind of intensive pre-school education
which involves the parents in that process can not only reduce
crime but save resources for the taxpayer. They have estimated
that for every dollar spent on that kind of approach in disadvantaged
high-crime areas, something like $7 is saved to the taxpayer in
the reduced costs of crime and the reduced costs of welfare among
young people, who become, therefore, better educated and get jobs.
Chairman: Mr Malins, substance abuse?
Mr Malins
445. The drug user who is responsible for
burglaries is the kind of person I am talking about. A community
sentence is not very applicable and certainly not community service.
Do you agree?
(Mr Cavadino) Broadly, yes.
446. The community service authorities will
not have drug abusers on their course, will they?
(Mr Cavadino) That varies, but it is certainly more
difficult to place people with drug problems on community service.
447. And ordinary straightforward probation
is likewise not an easy option for a drug abuser?
(Mr Cavadino) No. I agree with your general thrust
here. The evidence shows that whether drug users are given custody,
probation or community service, if the probation does not include
drug treatment the rate of drug use two years later is very much
the same whatever has been done.
448. So we are limited with these heavy
drug users, on the one hand to custody for long periods with the
availability of drugs in prison—that is a problem, is it
not?
(Mr Cavadino) It is a very substantial problem, yes.
449. What I am getting at is this. If you
agree that this is a really major problem we are facing, we are
now moving to a situation where we should have effectively some
form of compulsion of treatment of drug-takers. You have read
about Naltrexone, the new wonder drug which is helping to cure
heroin addiction in Singapore and America. Do you see anything
down this path?
(Mr Cavadino) I cannot pretend to know the medical
ins and outs of that particular proposal, so if I could deal with
the proposal in wider terms, I agree that court-ordered drug treatment
is an appropriate way of dealing with drug-dependent offenders.
There is a large amount of evidence now which suggests that it
can substantially reduce both the drug dependency and the offending
that goes with it. The evidence is from both sides of the Atlantic.
In this country the Department of Health has funded a national
treatment outcome research study which shows that very strongly
and some of the interesting evidence from drug courts in America
is that people who were not necessarily willing participants in
court-ordered drug treatment have often done very well, reduced
their drug problems and reduced their offending and it is not
simply those who have been voluntary participants.
450. Essentially though, treatment as a
condition of a probation order is out in the community, is it
not?
(Mr Cavadino) Yes.
451. Do you happen to have any statistics
which show whether those who are subject to a probation order
with a condition of drug treatment get cured?
(Mr Cavadino) I do not have statistics precisely in
that form. We have statistics from this country's national treatment
outcome research study that was funded by the Department of Health
which followed over 1,000 people going to drug treatment programmes
in 1995. I have summarised these in my memorandum and this indicates
that there is a very substantial reduction.
452. In what?
(Mr Cavadino) I am sorry, a reduction both in drug
use and in the level of crime committed by those people. Those
1,000 people in that survey had committed 70,000 offences between
them in the previous three months before they entered treatment
and the evidence shows a very substantial reduction in the rate
of drug abuse and also in the rate of offending by these people
as a result of that.
453. What number of offences did those 1,000
people commit during the course of, or in the year subsequent
to, their drug treatment?
(Mr Cavadino) We do not have the long-term follow-up
results yet. That is due to come out soon. What the initial results
show is the drop in criminal activity during the early stage of
treatment and the percentages, which are substantial, are included
in paragraph 25 of my memorandum. It does not answer the question
in that form because the results are not in that form.
Mr Malins: That is probably a subject for another
day.
Mr Howarth
454. Do you think that electronic monitoring
is an effective non-custodial alternative?
(Professor Rutherford) The short answer is we do not
really know. There have been these trials, due to be extended
under the new legislation. There is not a great deal of international
experience on it yet. It may be a useful device if used carefully
and used sensibly. Obviously the technology is improving all the
time and so the possibilities of its expansion are very considerable,
but I think at the end of the day, as has applied on a number
of these matters, there are going to be political philosophical
questions to be addressed as to what sort of society do you want
to move towards in terms of the level of surveillance under which
each one of us is placed. I think it is those questions rather
than actual effectiveness.
455. Are you implying that that causes you
a problem?
(Professor Rutherford) I think it might. It might
cause all of us a problem if we were placed under various forms
of electronic surveillance, which could be the end game of where
this whole thing takes you. I think these are questions that you
have to address.
456. So what role do you think these electronic
tagging devices have in protecting the public? Do you think they
are effective in protecting the public but that there is a civil
liberties price to pay?
(Professor Rutherford) The research results on that
are simply not here at the present time but there have been some
trials. There have been some suggestions that most people on them
are completing their orders and so on and so forth. I am sure
you have those results.
457. Eighty-two per cent.
(Professor Rutherford) There is clearly a reluctance
by the courts to use them at the present time. In those areas
that have just come into the scheme, very little take-up has been
made by the courts. So there are issues about electronic tagging
that go beyond the question of immediate effectiveness and those
are issues we have to face as a society.
(Mr Allen) Our view would be, on a more practical
level, that it depends on how it is used and on what kind of offender
it is used, and it may be that for people who are being released
from prison earlier than they otherwise might be—and that
is proposed in the Crime and Disorder Bill—that would be
an appropriate use, and similarly, when it is used alongside other
interventions that are designed to get more to the roots of what
people are doing. If you have a youngster of 18 or 19 who is involved
perhaps in drugs and has a very chaotic kind of lifestyle, a short
period of monitoring might enable him to attend his treatment
and start that kind of process to stabilise that kind of disorganised
lifestyle, but it would not be the monitoring that was doing the
trick there. It would be the kind of intervention that goes alongside
it and we have reservations about using it for very low-level
offenders such as people who cannot pay their fines and so on
because I think the cost-effectiveness argument comes into play
there. Unless you do use it very widely it is a very costly intervention
at the moment and the research that has been done has struggled
to get enough people sentenced on it to form a final view.
458. But it is cheaper than a probation
order?
(Mr Cavadino) It is cheaper than a probation order
if you use it extensively but that is only if you look at the
tagging element. Something like half the curfew orders that are
monitored by electronic tagging have been accompanied by probation
supervision as well, so you have to add it to the cost of probation
in one out of two of those cases.
Mr Allan
459. It is cheaper than prison?
(Mr Cavadino) They are all cheaper than prison.
Mr Cranston: It would be very helpful, to me
anyhow, if Mr Cavadino wants to develop paragraph 25 or whatever
of that memorandum, which we have not seen yet. He has got the
drift of what we are thinking but if we had examples of effective
methods of dealing with people outside prison, that would be helpful.
I think it would also be useful in the report to touch on the
sort of measures that Mr Allen was talking about. We know about
how nursery education leads to lower criminality but some of these
alternative schemes would be helpful to me personally. That sort
of thing would be quite helpful as background information.
Chairman
460. That may be the subject of another
inquiry.
(Mr Allen) We could happily supply a memorandum.[3]
Chairman:It would be helpful.
Mr Winnick:I would also find it helpful if,
when you see the detailed evidence given last week, you could
give us a response, not necessarily from the three organisations
but yours in particular because I think we should have your views
on the evidence, which was highly derogatory of the organisation
and I think it was serious enough to warrant a detailed response.
Chairman: Is that what we received this morning?
Mr Winnick: The oral evidence we had last week.
Chairman:The evidence we received this morning,
was that something separate?
Mr Winnick
461. Yes. We could not have seen it.
(Mr Cavadino) I am happy to look at that.
I think we would be happier to concentrate on the merits of the
argument advanced by Mr Coad and his colleagues rather than his
doubting of our motivation.
Mr Winnick: Yes, I understand, but I think we
should have a response nevertheless to some of the derogatory
comments.[4]
Chairman: That concludes today's evidence session.
Thank you very much for being so helpful and informative. We are
sorry to have kept you so long. The session is closed. Thank you.
2 See Appendix 10. Back
3
See Appendix 10. Back
4
See Appendix 10. Back
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