Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700
- 719)
TUESDAY 21 APRIL 1998
MR GRAHAM
SMITH, CBE AND
JANE FURNISS
Mr Linton
700. If I understood you right, you were saying
that the Inspectorate was conducting a campaign to improve the
effectiveness of the probation service. If that is so I am sure
we would all applaud it. You were also saying that they were subjecting
schemes to rigorous scrutiny—which, again, I am sure we
would applaud. Do you find it worrying that in the survey that
you conducted of 33 programmes, only four of them (to quote from
the report) "constitute good examples of what can be achieved"?
(Mr Smith) Yes. We were very disappointed about those
figures, and they pointed to the major problem that probation
services were demonstrating—that they could not prove to
an audience like this that they were being effective. It is something
that some had actually seemed to have forgotten about doing, that
you have to prove your effectiveness, otherwise no one will believe
you. I think that culturally the probation service has never seen
research as having a high priority, it was "getting up there
and doing it". Having a research component and research element,
and relying on it, was not something that was traditional to it.
As a chief, I was actually dismissive of research—I confess
to you—because it was always giving me bad news, or it was
saying "You cannot make any difference". So you tended
to push it to one side because it set against your empirical common-sense.
I think, also, it was not helped—and this is still true—that
not enough research money and resource is spent on community penalties.
It is not as entertaining or interesting as research on other
matters, on specific subjects, or prison type research. So we
are short of money and people out there—independent academics—in
research terms. We now have a slight improvement. We have the
Probation Studies Unit at Oxford, which is a new manifestation
altogether, which is going to concentrate what research it does
on community penalties. It is fairly poorly funded, and that is
not something which helps this business, but it is improving,
and now you will see the large areas, in particular, having their
own monitoring and research facilities. The Inspectorate and government,
generally, are saying "We will not believe you unless you
can prove that what you are doing is effective. We will not give
you the benefit of trusting you and what you say." The most
recent example in the What Works is that one of the programmes
that one service presented to us (which they were monitoring and
researching) had an 85 per cent failure rate. I thought that was
the most admirable piece of work and effect that came out of "What
Works" because they immediately closed the programme, redesigned
it and started all over again. In the past they would not have
had any idea that they were failing.
Mr Corbett
701. Forgive me, failure in terms of reconviction?
(Mr Smith) Reconviction, yes. That is the only test.
702. Or re-offending?
(Ms Furniss) Reconviction.
(Mr Smith) That is the only test we were establishing.
(Ms Furniss) Could I add that I think Mr Smith is
right, there has been insufficient resource put into probation
service research; it is a tiny amount of the Home Office budget—something
like £120,000 was spent by the Home Office last year on research
into the probation service. There has been no national strategy
for research, and I think that is something that we need to work
on because the 54 probation services are independent and, therefore,
able to produce very limited local research. That is a very real
problem. Very practical things like access to the police national
computer is a major problem, which is ludicrous but it is. That
has been taken much more seriously now than it was even twelve
months ago, and one of the pieces of work of our national campaign
(which is now being referred to as a strategy—"The
National Implementation Strategy) is to advise services of what
is meant by monitoring, evaluation and research. That has been
written on our behalf by a well-known academic, Professor Hough
(who has done a lot of work in this field and was previously a
Home Office researcher), and a manager from the probation service
working with us to ensure that that advice makes sense to the
probation service and can be implemented.
Mr Linton
703. Can I be a little clearer about the meaning
of this evaluation? Four of the projects were described as examples
of success, and another group were described as, while not successful,
promising. What about the others? Are they not successful, or
not able to prove their success? There is a huge difference.
(Ms Furniss) They are a mixture of both, because "successful"
in the terms of that very rigorous approach was not only had they
got sufficient evidence to demonstrate that they were being effective
but that they were also being effective. There were some effective
pieces of research that demonstrated that the programmes were
not effective. A lot of the others, the 200 or so, that could
not match the rigor were much too small. That was one of the major
problems.
704. With some of the projects we have seen,
for instance, I think they have not been running for long enough
to demonstrate, or they are not big enough for the figures to
be statistically relevant. These would be—
(Ms Furniss) They would be a mixture of all those.
705. These would be in the category that they
were not able to prove their success?
(Ms Furniss) Most of them would be not proven, rather
than proved to be a failure.
706. Surely, in the aggregate, you could test
the success of, for instance, intensive probation projects?
(Ms Furniss) Sadly not, because they are not the same
thing. What is meant by one probation service as an intensive
probation programme is not necessarily anything like the same
animal that is meant by another service.
(Mr Smith) We have a real problem with scale, because
unless we can get scale (and we have ideas about how we do that,
and by that we mean—hundreds—of programmes in) we
are always going to be difficulty in proving and convincing more
sceptical audiences. We are out for scale in future.
707. At the moment it is partly the hunch of
senior probation officers; they feel a particular scheme is working
well and is successful. Do you find cases where probation officers
are convinced that a scheme is working well but, when you look
at the figures, it is not?
(Ms Furniss) Yes, because quite often the judgment
of it is working well is based on offender response—those
who attend and how well they respond—and is not based on
hard data, such as reconviction, over a long period of time. Often
that information simply is not available to the staff.
(Mr Smith) What we are aiming to do in our "What
Works" strategy is allow hunch (and hunch is an important
instinct) but only when principles have been established. So they
work to the key principles and disciplines of those, and then
instinct, or hunch, only comes in as an override and then checked
out by someone else subsequently.
708. Although reconviction rates must be the
bottom line, or the ultimate test, the point has been made to
us on some of our visits—especially working with drug offenders—that
it is such a long process to wean them off drugs that what they
experience first is a lower level of offending, or less serious
crimes, as the first step towards complete cessation. So that
they may be having success even though they have not actually
resulted in a complete stop in reconviction. Do you accept that?
(Mr Smith) That is absolutely true, but it is going
to take a very mature public to respond to that. We would not,
in the Inspectorate, get away with that yet. We are going to have
to win more confidence first, because it is reconviction that
impresses. If we came forward with figures about attitude change
that we have observed and could not tie, at the end, to reconviction,
I would have trouble in persuading audiences that that had merit.
However, that is happening, and there is attitude change.
(Ms Furniss) A proper completion of the court order
is a very important indicator which may go alongside continued
but reduced offending. Having good data about orders having been
completed according to the court's requirements and according
to national standards is very important as a first stage of measuring
effectiveness.
709. Coming on to sentencers, one of our concerns
has been how to persuade sentencers to make more use of these
programmes, but how can we expect them to make more use of them,
if you cannot demonstrate a higher success rate than your figures
demonstrate? Would they not be justified in saying "Well,
even intensive probation has yet to prove its value"?
(Mr Smith) Yes. We are in regular contact with the
Judicial Studies Board, and we speak to them. Indeed they are
interested in the effectiveness strategies that we have outlined.
They are using us increasingly; the number of community penalties
is going up, and in every thematic we do and in every area inspection
we perform we go and see the sentencers, and a significant sample
of them, as part and parcel of what we do. We find that there
is much better sentencer confidence than we expected there to
be. One of the messages, however, we do give the Judicial Studies
Board is that the sentencers, both Judges and Recorders, must
make more demands on the probation service. They do not know the
national standards, for example, by which they could hold services
to account in terms of report writing and supervision of orders
that they make, and to say to judges "Why don't you visit
probation services?" They do not. We want to encourage much
greater partnership and involvement.
710. One of my colleagues is going to come on
to the thorny issue of visits, but while we are still on the subject
of effectiveness can I ask you about reconviction rates. You cite
the research that suggests that community programmes can reduce
offending by 10 per cent, but do you accept the general findings
in the Home Office research, which is that there is no significant
difference in reconviction rates between custodial and community
sentences?
(Mr Smith) I accept those figures, although in the
figures that they have produced it is fair to say I did not notice
one thing until the terror of coming here caused both of us to
look at the figures more closely.
711. You flatter us unduly.
(Mr Smith) I wish I had noticed it, because I could
have put it in my annual report, but I failed. I can put this
into the Committee. In referring to reducing crime amongst high-risk
serious offenders, then the improvement on prison—with a
control group of the same—is 3.1 per cent. So this is a
significant difference, in terms of statistics, on what is said
to be an equal figure. So with high-risk offenders who normally
would be in custody, the probation service is actually reducing—and
it is reconviction that we are talking about—the figures.
That is a real improvement. However, what I would say overall,
and this was another reason why we got into "What Works",
is that included in the figures across probation orders, community
service orders—all of the community penalties—with
little improvement on prison, you are, of course, finding programmes
which are hitting 10, 15, 20 per cent better, and the "What
Works" programmes average a 10 per cent improvement on prison
across the board. General offending, drugs offending, sex offending—whatever
the programme—following the principles that have been derived
from research, get an average 10 per cent improvement. That is
the attraction.
712. All of these ones that get 10, 15 or 20
per cent, they would come under the category usually described
as intensive probation?
(Mr Smith) Yes, so far.
713. No ordinary, once a week, or once a fortnight,
probation orders have shown that kind of result.
(Ms Furniss) No, they have not.
Mr Winnick
714. Listening to what you have said, I am wondering
if you are quibbling a little. The impression that I get—and
perhaps my colleagues as well—is that there is always a
wish on the part of the probation service (and I, for one, recognise
the very difficult day-to-day work that probation officers do
in the field) to give the strong impression that the reconviction
rates are much better than those who have had custodial sentences.
Yet you admitted that you accept the Home Office research figures
that show there is no difference at all.
(Mr Smith) I made it clear to this Committee that
I accepted those figures, but one of my responsibilities is to
improve on community penalties, for obvious reasons. It saves
money and if we can do better and better then the probation service
and community penalties will appear more in court sentencing.
There is evidence that if we do certain things in the probation
service those results can be achieved, and that is part of my
responsibility and duty. The other thing about this effectiveness
strategy is that it is an optimistic and positive one. I have
spent 30 years in the probation service, part of which my experience
is of a negative and pessimistic one: the only reason for having
a probation service was that it was cheaper than sending people
to prison—which is valuable in itself but is not something
that you want as an epitaph for a life's career. Now, in the last
few years, we are on to something in the probation service. In
relation to these programmes, I am not saying that these principles
are going to be easy to achieve; some of them are extremely difficult
to achieve and will require a change of behaviour from top to
bottom, not just in the probation service but in government, in
terms of how they see and how they reward good programmes.
715. Could there not be a different view, namely
that be it a custodial sentence or the probation service, you
are dealing with people who undoubtedly have an inclination (to
put it at its mildest) towards criminality, and whether they go
to prison or the probation service they are the weakest link when
it comes to preserving law and order. Therefore, does it really
make much difference, regarding reconviction rates, that they
are people very much along the description I have just given?
You cannot change that in the probation service, any more than
prison can.
(Mr Smith) Putting it at its most pessimistic—and
that is, of course, a pessimistic question which one is used to—people
coming out of prison commit more serious offences. So if we can
reduce the seriousness of offences and offending, and the damage
to the community, that in itself is attractive and important.
There is no doubt too, again from what we have seen on our visits
around the service and which have been researched, that in addition
to reducing offending What Works has reduced the seriousness
of offending. So even where reconviction rates have been the same
between community programmes and prisons the level of seriousness
of the offence that has been committed is better with the community
penalty programmes.
716. Against which one would say yes, one is
not surprised because the sort of person who has been found guilty
of criminality, and the more serious the offence, that person
has gone to prison. So it is not surprising that when released
more serious offences are committed, whereas, presumably, those
who are given probation as an alternative to a custodial sentence
have committed a lesser offence, and, therefore, it is in line
with the original conviction.
(Mr Smith) No, that is not true. The research is quite
clear on this, because the results are predicted results, so the
population is the same. So you have a weighting for that very
issue. In fact, I could argue that in most communities the same
people get sent to prison in one community and given community
penalties in others, but the weighting takes account and allows
for that.
Mr Cranston
717. Briefly, to underline the importance of
evaluation, we have been around and seen various projects, and
they create a very good impression. Unfortunately, however, evaluation
does not seem to be on the agenda. Two problems. You say resources.
That does not wash these days; probation services have to find
the resources to do this. The other one—and this is the
point of the question—is this point about the national police
computer. What is it all about? We have been told that the probation
services cannot get access to these figures; they can get local
figures but they cannot get the national figures. Not to put too
fine a point on it, it seems to be a nonsense if you cannot do
evaluation because of some objection to access to the computer.
(Mr Smith) If I have been depressed about anything
over the past six years as Chief Inspector it has been the continuing
inability to use technology to obtain information and, also, to
speak across to the police, who are our most important partners.
This is not a new phenomenon, it seems to defeat all of us, and
I get more and more frustrated—indeed, angry and upset—about
this brave new world (indeed, I have become computer literate
myself) being unable to give me the information as quickly, or
in the form I want, so that I have to rely on some manual system.
718. So what is the problem? Is it the willingness
on the part of the police to provide information?
(Mr Smith) No.
719. Is it legal objections?
(Mr Smith) No, neither of those.
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