Examination of Witnesses (Questions 740
- 757)
TUESDAY 21 APRIL 1998
MR GRAHAM
SMITH, CBE AND
JANE FURNISS
740. Can I take up a point about technology?
What I saw in the South Yorkshire Probation Service was a brilliant
computer system for community service which could tell you for
every person on community service exactly when they turned up,
how good their work was and so on. Do you get that kind of information
supplied to you when you do your inspections?
(Ms Furniss) Yes.
741. So when you go, they will produce a print-out
for you?
(Ms Furniss) For each area inspection, we would see
before we go the national standards performance data of that service
for the last period, but, in addition to that, we do our own sampling
in order to verify and validate that data so that every area inspection
will include the examination of a sample of cases looking at national
standards performance in great detail. I do not know if anyone
has ever counted how many national standards there are, but there
are hundreds of them and we focus on commencement and enforcement
in particular.
742. That was the area we were going on to.
We have looked at things like the Community Sentence Demonstration
Project where a key issue was additional requirements being associated
with probation orders. Do you believe that that sort of thing
should move through national standards or, as you have been saying,
do you think that the national standards are complex enough and
there ought to be other mechanisms for bringing things like additional
requirements in?
(Ms Furniss) Some of the additional requirements are
already taken care of in the national standards. I think probably
it is the right time in the next twelve months, particularly in
the light of new legislation, the Crime and Disorder Bill, when
we will in any case need to review the national standards as a
result of that and it is likely that that will result in a wholesale
review and in relation to effectiveness principles, if we are
to build that in to Service operation, they need to be written
into the national standards as well.
743. Coming on to resources briefly, we have
had evidence, particularly from NAPO, that there has been a fall
in the budget over the last two years and there are projected
falls in the budget for the Probation Service over the next two
years amounting to 29 per cent in real terms overall. Are you
seeing the impact of a falling budget, falling staff numbers and
increased caseloads causing problems out there in the probation
areas?
(Mr Smith) Well, over the last four years we estimate
that there has been an 8 per cent cut in real terms in resources
for the Service. We do not see any evidence that I think would
convince you that the quality of the Service has declined even
though there are many fewer staff working with many more orders.
I suppose it is arguable that our inability to get national standards
compliance up may be linked with the fact that there is no question
that the Service is working harder now than it has ever done,
but you could also argue, and I do, that the Service has never
been more efficient and it has had to be because it has taken
these cuts and still coped with more work and we still do not
see any reduction in quality. However, I believe also that some
services are closer to trouble than others. With 54 services,
historically some services are poorer than others and so we could
identify services which we think are worse off. We are going to
major on costs next year in our inspection programme because we
produce the unit costs for the Home Office within the Inspectorate
and frankly we cannot work out why costs vary so widely across
the country.
744. Can I ask a specific question about the
tension between national standards and budgets? Probation officers
have indicated to me that they, for example, make an assessment
of risk and it is like the waiting times we are seeing in the
NHS, but rather than stick to the national standard of treating
everyone, they would rather focus the resources on the highest
risk.
(Mr Smith) Yes.
745. How do you feel about that? If you go in
to do an inspection and they are not complying with national standards,
are you saying to them that they should not prioritise in that
way and that they should see the person twelve times even if they
are no risk rather than see the high-risk person more times?
(Mr Smith) Well, we understand that and if a service
can demonstrate to us that they are focusing on high-risk offenders
and not on low-risk offenders, we would commend them for that
and we would acknowledge that in our report of their compliance
with national standards. What we want them to be able to do is
prove that is what they are doing and then we will give them the
allowance. However, I repeat that we are at the end of phase one
of the national standards which have been first class for the
Probation Service, it is a means of holding them to account which
we never had before, and I think it is time to look at them very
closely and that is also something that I expect the Inspectorate
to do because we are the parent of the national standards and
we have to look after them on behalf of the Home Secretary.
Mr Malins
746. Mr Smith, the new proposals in the Crime
and Disorder Bill for young offenders in particular, the Parenting
Orders, the Reparation Orders and Action Plan Orders, are you
wildly enthusiastic about those? Are they going to make a real
impact, do you think?
(Mr Smith) I certainly hope so because I think that
has been one of the weakest, if not the weakest area of criminal
justice in my experience over the past few years. It is hard at
this moment to see how they are going to work out. I am quite
clear that there have to be teeth somewhere in the Home Office
to make sure that 160 plus unitary authorities, 54 probation services
and all sorts of voluntary bodies actually work to an overarching
strategy and can be held to account for it. That is my reason
why I think youth justice has mostly failed, in my view, because
of this fragmentation kaleidoscope which is special and unique
to youth justice and so critical to it. That is the test for me,
whether someone can bite down on each of those unitary authorities
and local probation services and chief executives, whoever they
are, and hold them to account. That is the test.
747. It is quite clear, is it not, that the
provisions in the Bill are going to result in extra work for the
Probation Service and extra personnel and extra costs?
(Mr Smith) Yes.
748. Now, given, as I understand it, that many
Probation Service budgets are being cut, are you confident that
the resources are going to be available to all the Probation Service
for these extra demands?
(Mr Smith) No. My experience is that it is unlikely
that they will be there and that has been true of most of my working
life.
749. How would you cope?
(Mr Smith) I think for me it is about the targeting
and identification of where the high-risk work is and the priorities
and that again is something that the system has not been very
good at in the past and one of the reasons again is where we started.
There was a cultural bias against trying to predict behaviour
because as it made no difference what you did, you should not
try and predict behaviour and create victims and label people.
750. But you are definitely going to need more
money, are you not, to cope with the burdens being imposed upon
you?
(Mr Smith) I believe for that, for youth justice,
yes.
(Ms Furniss) One of the optimistic matters is that
the Bill does intend that much of the new work will be piloted,
for example, the Drug Treatment and Testing Order, the youth offending
teams, and part of the reason for piloting is to discover what
the resource implications are. Now, whether the resources that
are implicated will then follow, I think, is what we cannot be
confident of, but certainly it would provide a sounder basis.
751. I take it you would agree with me that
drugs is really the major problem and threat in criminal life?
Just as a quick yes or no, would you agree with that or not?
(Mr Smith) I would put it top first with dangerousness.
752. Can the Probation Service deal very well
with issues of drugs? Are there any improvements or any good things
which have been happening?
(Mr Smith) Jane Furniss has just written the seminal
work on this.
(Ms Furniss) We recently published our thematic inspection
on the work of the Probation Service with drug misusers and we
can let you have a copy of that. It provides a lot of good news
about the Service's effectiveness in working with drug misusers,
but it says that there is room for improvement, as you would expect
us to say, particularly around using much more effectively treatment
of drug misusers as a condition of a court order, so coerced treatment
which is effective.
753. Coerced treatment?
(Ms Furniss) Coerced treatment, yes.
754. A very good idea?
(Mr Smith) Yes, with the court making an order with
a requirement.
(Ms Furniss) The Drug Treatment and Testing Order
is going to provide a real opportunity.
755. It may or may not go far enough though.
(Ms Furniss) It will depend on the nature of the treatment
and the nature of the assessment of the individual and I am not
sure if there was something more behind your point.
Chairman: Mr Cranston, extremely briefly, would
you just ask about the relationship between the Prison and the
Probation Services?
Mr Cranston
756. There has been a discussion about this
and of course the Home Secretary has made certain statements.
The Chairman has asked me to ask this question, but I am not sure
what he wants me to ask. What is your view on this closer working
relationship?
(Mr Smith) Well, we must have as close a working relationship
with the Prison Service as is possible. About a third of the work
of the Probation Service is in pre-release and post-release licence
of people coming out of prison.
757. One Service?
(Mr Smith) No. No, I would personally not think that
that would make sense. I believe the Prison Service would overpower
the Probation Service and you would lose the "grit in the
prison machine" which I think is necessary, so I personally
would be for the closest possible integration, but I would not
be for one Service.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Smith and
Ms Furniss. That was a very useful session.
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