Examination of Witnesses (Questions 720
- 739)
TUESDAY 21 APRIL 1998
MR GRAHAM
SMITH, CBE AND
JANE FURNISS
720. They are just not able to do it?
(Mr Smith) It is equipment, software.
(Ms Furniss) The ease of access is to do with the
lack of equipment. Therefore it relies on a small number of people
in the Home Office providing the information to requests from
probation services. So, again, it is a resource issue. Providing
national data is not given priority.
721. Where is the problem? In the Home Office?
(Ms Furniss) I think it is a mixture of both Home
Office and local access to the information from probation services.
Ideally, a probation officer ought to be able to access reconviction
information about every offender on their case load at the touch
of button, but not a single probation officer can do that, at
the moment.
Mr Cranston: Chairman, I do not want to pursue
this, but if we had a note?
Chairman
722. That is an important point. Just one matter
before we move on. The Home Secretary has said that one of the
ways of convincing the public that community sentences are worthwhile
is if they were visibly seen to be achieving some public good.
I do not mean in terms of re-offending rates, which we have talked
about, but if they were programmes that were seen to be doing
something useful. If I might give a simple example: if one drives
up the A1 through Gateshead and Newcastle, or down the A19 through
Peterlee, one can see the same plastic bags hanging from the same
trees month in, month out. Now, if those offenders for whom it
was thought there was not a very high chance of rehabilitating
were merely organised into clearing that up, that would be seen—by
the public certainly—as achieving something worthwhile,
without having any unrealistic expectations about the outcome,
but at least doing something useful. What are your thoughts on
that?
(Mr Smith) I have no problem with that—I imagine
you visited some community service sites—because cleaning
off graffiti and repairing and improving the local community are
desirable activities and ones that now all probation services
will have in their kitbag to offer. More of that I see no problem
with at all. I think it makes sense, for the reasons you have
said, and in terms of restorative justice and reparation to the
community it is very real and very visible, and we encourage it.
Mr Corbett
723. Mr Smith, it is rather strange that with
the Internet and e-mail we can talk to people all over the planet
in a matter of seconds, yet, as you have just described, you and
the probation service cannot get the information you want with
such ease from the police. It is worse than that, really, is it
not, because the police are unable to speak to each other as well?
(Mr Smith) That is true.
724. I think, perhaps, you are being too kind,
Ms Furniss, about where the responsibility is. I am a simple fellow,
really. You have got a Home Office which has got some responsibilities
laid upon it, and I would have thought this is firmly in their
deck, although I am not saying there are not other players. Can
you say something to me on this issue of effectiveness? The effectiveness
of programmes, presumably, is also going to be influenced by the
climate of the times—in other words, the new emphasis which
this government is giving, for example, to Education Action Zones,
to try to stimulate better performance in schools; the New Deal
programme, particularly targeted at the jobless under-25, mainly
fellows, who are high users of prison services; and training jobs
opportunities. As those things develop, presumably that is going
to have an impact on effectiveness in the sense that there is
better opportunity (to put it no higher) of those serving community
sentences to think "If I get through this there is somewhere
else to go; there is a real possibility of training that can lead
to a job" which has not been the case recently. Is that fair?
(Mr Smith) Yes, I think that one of the key elements
of effective work with offenders is what we call—we would
have said meeting their needs in the past but we are now saying
meeting their criminogenic needs. That is a jargon word but it
means those needs which correlate to crime. To give you an example,
we can build up the self-esteem of an offender and, if we do that,
we can make him a more mature, successful offender, because improving
one's self-esteem does not mean you reduce their criminality.
Too often in the past it was seen as something you should try
and do. However, improving someone's educational skills and finding
an employment outlet or opportunity are real criminogenic needs.
If you focus down hard and put aside some of these more enjoyable
things about improving self-esteem you would begin to make a difference.
One of the things we ask when we inspect programmes is "Prove
to us you are dealing with criminogenic need. What are you doing
about education or improving skills opportunities? What are you
doing about employment skills?" There are other things that
we emphasise, too. We believe that this is sensible policy, that
the probation service will benefit, and so will programmes if
it is developed as I hope it will.
725. Sir David Ramsbotham argued quite strongly,
when he came to see us, that the 54, what we call, independent
services ought to be united in a national probation service along
the lines of the prison service. Do you see advantage in this?
(Mr Smith) I see some advantages but I would be cautious
about it. Let me put it this way: the advantages to a national
service certainly comes out of the effectiveness agenda. If government
could say "You will run programmes in this way" or "We
expect there to be a single risk inventory", a national service
would be able to achieve that more easily than 54 services, some
of whom might decide to not follow it or not obey it. It is also
true that there are some probation services amongst the 54 which
I think are too small to be viable and they are too expensive
to run and I think that is a judgment I have formed since inspection.
726. The Rutland factor?
(Mr Smith) Yes, I think that is true. However, there
is something essentially local about crime, that it is different
in Powys from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and also people respond to
local crime so that the Probation Service is much more popular
in the local community with the local press than, for example,
it is with the national press who generally tend to dismiss it
and not to be very complimentary. If a national service damaged
those local roots, I would have considerable anxiety. I believe
it is right now to have a long debate on this and to listen to
people's arguments, the judiciary would be important, and police
would be critical because police/probation relations are very
important to effective working in the Service. They are not a
national police force, so it is a big debate. I would be cautious
about a national service.
727. I understand exactly the point you are
making about that and I personally have a dilemma about this in
the sense that there are going to be for good reasons variations
in the way the probation services run programmes against agreed
national standards and I think that is important, on the one hand.
(Mr Smith) Yes.
728. On the other hand, I, and I expect my colleagues
as well, wonder why some of the schemes which we have seen which
have demonstrated success in terms of reconviction rates, why
that is not happening more evenly across the rest of the country
because patterns of crime in estates in all of our constituencies
are exactly the same and people are brassed off with the disorder
aspect of that which then shades into crime. It is that disorder
aspect and that is a national phenomenon and unhappily in the
rural areas as well, so how do we square those two things? In
other words, it is your "What Works" thing, but why
is it not working more evenly and more quickly?
(Mr Smith) I think it is the major argument for a
national service frankly because we have personal experience of
an area running an effective programme not getting sufficient
offenders on the programme, but there being a population of offenders
who would benefit from it just across a boundary in another county
and only a few miles away, but there is no collaboration between
them and that is stupid and unreasonable.
729. Can you encourage this cross-border co-operation?
(Ms Furniss) I think that is very much part of a strategy
which we are working on right at this moment which is, as I would
envisage it, that within the next twelve months, we will have
available three or four programmes that meet the effectiveness
criteria and we will expect probation services to use those three
or four across the country. That has not happened before and there
has not been a sort of national curriculum at all and that is
very much the work that we are in the middle of at this moment.
Chairman
730. In your evidence you said, "The evidence
also suggests certain principles associated with effective intervention
and most of the programmes so far that have been reviewed did
not meet the tests for effective supervision". What are these
primary principles?
(Mr Smith) Perhaps I can just read out each definition
of the principles and then I will briefly explain them. The first
is the risk principle and that says that an effective treatment
programme must be able to differentiate offenders in their risk
to re-offend and then match their risk to level of offending,
and higher-risk offenders require more intensive services than
lower-risk. Now, what this demands is that every probation service
and indeed the Prison Service work to a single risk assessment
and management inventory. Now, we have no single risk inventory,
but we are beginning to develop two real possibilities. The Prison
Service themselves want to use one and we both, both the Prison
and the Probation Service, want to use the same one. Now, these
devices are increasingly sophisticated and able to assess risk
both of dangerousness and risk of re-offending and they would
also be part of the basis of pre-sentence reports to courts and
there are nearly 220,000 of those. That is principle one.
731. So one is risk.
(Mr Smith) The second one is needs and I briefly suggest
this, that the needs of offenders must be addressed, but there
are two types of needs, one criminogenic and one non-criminogenic.
You forget about the non-criminogenic, however appealing or attractive
they are and you go for the criminogenic. I will not go through
the list, but merely mention that.
732. You touched on that point a moment ago.
(Mr Smith) The third is the most difficult and is
a terrible word and no one has been able to find another, which
is "responsivity", and this is matching. The right programme
may have the wrong people on it and the wrong staff working it,
so you really have to match the ability of the offender to cope
with the programme with the individual worker who can work best
with that type of offender. In the Probation Service we do not
match, but we often issue work out on the basis of geography or
whose turn it is and some probation officers are very good with
old lags, some are very good with delinquent kids and some have
high—
733. So horses for courses.
(Mr Smith) Yes, horses for courses and that is very
difficult to bring off. The fourth is programme integrity and
this is for evaluation purposes. This means that you do not change
your programme half-way through, however tempted you are or however
dismal it seems to be working because if you do, you will never
know whether it is working or not at the end. Now, this goes against
flexibility, being adaptable, and it means that once you start
on your design, you finish it whatever the consequences, otherwise
you can never learn anything from it. That is against a lot of
training and a lot of instinct. The fifth is the professional
override, and paedophiles are the classic example of the need
for this where because paedophiles groom their victims, often
have no sense that they are doing anything wrong, in fact they
are doing them a favour and because they are patient, they often
score low on some of these risk inventories we are talking about.
In other words, some of us might score higher in terms of risk
of that sort, so there must be a professional override, but it
must never be done singularly and it must always be done in co-operation.
Those are the five. It is brutally frank and short and they are
profoundly difficult to bring off, but they can be done.
Mr Allan
734. On the issue of national standards, presumably
this is a major feature of an area inspection, to check compliance.
(Mr Smith) Yes, it is.
735. Can you give us a brief idea of how effectively
you think national standards are being adhered to and which in
particular are not being adhered to in your experience from your
area inspections?
(Mr Smith) Well, I would say that we are disappointed
overall by compliance levels with national standards. We believe
they could be much better than they are. We now have league tables
for national standards across bunches of areas.[1]
736. In the public domain?
(Mr Smith) In the public domain, yes, and we find
that we can improve some compliance figures through that device,
which is, put crudely, naming and shaming, but we are overall
disappointed. Now, the national standards, I think, which are
the critical ones for us are enforcement, breach. Some areas can
achieve close to 100 per cent figures and some are as low as 20
to 30 per cent. Now, the other thing about national standards
is that you have to differentiate between those standards which
are in the control of the Probation Service and those standards
which are, for example, in the control or significant control
of the courts. I also believe at the moment that we have got to
the stage with the national standards where we have probably got
too many.
737. Can I take you back to enforcement? Are
you suggesting that basically there is a pattern in some probation
areas whereby they allow people to breach their orders far more
times than the national standard lays down which is, I think,
twice and then back to court, is it not?
(Mr Smith) Yes.
738. Is that the pattern you are seeing?
(Mr Smith) No, what we are seeing is that some areas
will have 100 per cent enforcement because they will follow that
national standard—
739. Miss, miss, court.
(Mr Smith) Yes, and they will do it every time whatever
and that is what we want, that is good practice. In some areas
they never get near it and they are the ones we are targeting.
1 See Appendix 33. Back
|
